Losing Time, Taking My Own Way Down
by This Is Sarcasm
Summary: AU. Asher is a ticking time bomb and he knows it. As if being physically changed wasn't enough, he hears and see the Vex in his dreams as well. But one night, he sees something else; an Iron Lord, lost to time. And with her, all the old ways the Guardians have forgotten. Enter Lady Darkrose... the first Nightstalker. First to be coined 'Hunter'. And she is ready for dawn again.
1. Losing Time

_Losing Time- Bob Mould_

 _"As you see me fade away..."_

Allison Rose thought herself a simple woman. She'd had need of a weapon; so, she made one. She pulled it from the void. She spent months encroached in Fallen territory, with nothing but a knife. She had never tried to touch the void before; no outlaw ever had. The void was known to the Warlords, the Titans and Warlocks, but the outlaws knew it not. They were nothing but fire and lightning.

Except for her. The one exception. The bow had always been her weapon of choice, so it was the shape she chose. She had warped her Light to extremes in able to do it, pushed the very limits of what the chosen were able to accomplished. She'd only shared her techniques with one person, a young outlaw named Tevis.

She doubted Tevis would live to be a century old. He was cocky.

But she was smart. She kept this skill, and it's secrets, to herself now. She didn't want to draw the attention of a Warlord; or worse, those 'iron wolves' she'd hard of in latest rumors. Those rumors involved the death of Segoth and an Arcstrider named Gheleon. She had no desire to catch the attention of an Arcstrider; they were rare because they were the deadliest kind of outlaw there was.

And it was in this that she was simple; she had a dangerous new skill. She used it to survive, but kept it hidden as best she could so as not to attract attention. She didn't throw her weight around like the Warlords and the other outlaws; as far as anyone in the area knew, she was a plain and simple hunter looking to catch deer in exchange for pay and supplies.

But there was nothing simple about bandits. They were erratic, not smart at all. Kicking the weak down to make themselves look strong. And stealing her latest catch, quite the buck as well. She was simple in the fact that she decided to reclaim what was rightfully hers. But there was something not quite so simple about this particular instance... for this time, there was a hostage.

Or he would become a hostage, if she played her cards wrong.

"P-please, I'll give you anything you want just leave it alone!" he was begging, forced to his knees in front of the leader. The young man was ostensibly a traveler, in possession of nothing more than the cloths on his back and what looked to be a few supplies. He had bright blue eyes, dusty brown hair, and that haggard, worn look you always saw on those who'd come far. She stayed in the shadows. The leader held something up. The young man looked at it with fear; not fear _of_ , but fear _for_.

"And why would you want this thing?" the leader laughed he held up his gun, pointing it at the young man's head. He'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time; an innocent caught up in a mess. She pulled her bow. "You had nerve, I'll give you tha-"

He cut off with a scream as he was eaten by a lance of void light. It spread outwards, catching all in it's range, snapping their arms to their sides so they were helpless. The young man cringed, clearly expecting to be caught by the void as well, but opened his eyes when he realized he was actually the only one free.

"Go!" she yelled. Instead he dove for something on the ground as she threw a ball of void at the anchored bandits. The vortex ate two, and made two more scream. Those few who were out of range of her shot finally realized they were under attack, but by then, it was too late even for them. Her hand cannon barked several times, all the while the young man lay curled on the ground clutching something to his chest.

As the void collapsed and the anchor tying the bodies together faded, she approached. He was murmuring softly, like someone trying to comfort a child. Something in his bag, which was abandonded in the dirt, moved. She strode towards it.

"Don't!" He suddenly barked. He was sitting upright now, looking at her pleadingly, thought he was obviously frightened. Who wouldn't be, of her skills? "Please don't hurt them! They haven't done anything wrong!"

"They?" she questioned. He hesitantly brought his hands away from his chest... but the Ghost he'd been guarding remained in place, it's shell spinning nervously as it eyed her. Outlaws and Warlords had a tendency to kill stray Ghosts they found; it meant less competition in the future, after all.

"You're smuggling Ghosts." she let the wry smile spread across her face as one with a black shell cautiously poked out from the bag. This man wasn't a chosen; he was a sympathizer. Her own Ghost flashed into existence.

"Oh, my. There are _a lot_ of you." he commented. He spun in the man's direction. "How long have you been doing this for?"

He seemed frozen. One hand still hovered near the newest addition to his collection.

"Look," she threw her hands up in surrender, "I don't kill Ghosts. Not my way. Not my way to kill bystanders either. I'm just here for my catch."

"Your... catch?" he asked hesitantly.

She strode towards her deer, which had been hacked into pieces. She glowered. _Waste of food. Idiots._ "Yes, my catch."

"Oh, I see!" he brightened considerably. "You're just a hunter! A hunter with the light!"

"You're so smart." she commented dryly. He ignored her, looking down at the Ghost he'd saved. Now that he wasn't terrified, he looked childishly bubbly.

"Guess we don't have anything to worry about after all! If there's a hunter, there's a town!" he assured it brightly. "Now, first things first; do you have a name?"

"N-no. nobody's ever given me a name before, mister... uhh..." the Ghost trailed off in a feminine voice.

"Timur. I'm Timur, and I say; _everything_ needs a name." Allison rolled her eyes as she salvged what she could from her kill. "Hmmm, so you're a girl... how's 'bout 'Kitty'? 'Kit' for short!"

""Kitty?'" Allison twisted to look at him incredulously. "You can't be serious, right?"

"Well, if they don't have names, I give them ones from books. I've got an Aramis, a Porthos, a Reepicheep, Eustace, Faolan, Constance, and a D'Artagnan." he explained. "So, 'Kitty', after Milady's complacent servant who didn't like her very much. Probably because she was evil."

"Oh, dear, this is awkward." her own Ghost sighed. "I'm a D'Artagnan as well."

"Oh. Well, great minds think alike!" Timur tapped the side of his head, and then jumped to his feet. "Alright, folks, back in the bag, we're coming up on civilized people! You wouldn't mind leading the way, hunter."

She heaved a sigh as he looked at her expectantly. She didn't think she could stand this bubbly villager for an hour-long trip, let alone if he decided to stay in the town she was working for. She sincerely hoped he decided not to stay.

"Very well. But as long as you're there, _I don't have powers_ , are we clear?" she emphasized by giving a pulse of void light in her hand. He didn't seem to notice; he only beamed at her, and gather his belongings.

"In you go, Kitty. I'll get you somewhere safe, I promise." he said to the newest Ghost as he held his bag open for her.

"Thank you." she whispered before disappearing.

* * *

"So how'd you do it, hunter?" he pressed eagerly. "Learning to use the void like that, I've never heard of anything like it!"

"Something tells me you haven't met a lot of chosen." she guessed.

"No, but I've been studying the Light, how your powers work, the way the Ghosts connect to you!" she immediately regretted striking up conversation with him; once you got him started, he didn't stop. "I wish _I_ were chosen, I could test out all my theories myself. Sadly, I don't think many Warlords or outlaws are interested in the science of how their powers work; or how they _could_ work! I mean, look at you! If an outlaw can touch the void, what does that mean for Titans and fire? Or Warlocks and arc energy? The possibilities are endless, astounding!"

The village had food and supplies, and had agreed to give him a horse in exchange for striking a trade deal with a village to the west. Timur had asked only for one other thing aside from those, and that was the magnet the village chief's son had been playing with. But there was no room to house him for any amount of time, and nobody wanted a stranger in their home, so she had offered to let him hole up in her spare room for the next few days. It wouldn't do for him to get sick sleeping in this weather; if he got sick, he would have to stay longer, and his eccentricities were already getting on her nerves.

"So, I need to ask; what's with the Ghosts?" they were having 'watercooler conversations' with her own Ghost. The other D'Artagnan was as eccentric as Timur. The one with the black shell she'd seen earlier, who happened to be Aramis, heard her and spoke up.

"He's taking us to Germany." he explained. "And helping us find our chosen, if our instincts don't put us too out of the way. Porthos and I were two of the first he found; the third, Athos? Found his chosen. We also helped Xavier find his, and Lucy."

"They say the Traveler is somewhere in Germany!" Timur added. "And there's a huge camp there! There's no safer place for a Ghost than there, and it's the perfect place to find a ship that can take us to America; Reepicheep and Pothos both sensed something out there, from across the sea."

"Sensed?"

"The Ghosts are like compasses, attuned to one pole; that pole being the chosen they're destined to find." Timur explain, as cheerfully as he had everything else. She refused to believe that anyone, let alone someone who spent most nights sleeping in the cold, could possibly be _this_ constantly happy. "They were all created with a sense, of sorts; they know who they're supposed to find, they just have to search, rigorously. This sense, it's like gut feelings. My theory, is that Ghosts and their chosen posses a link through each others light, and that the direct solidification of this link is what allows for revival and access to you powers."

"If I'm a compass, I think I'm broken." Kitty sighed unhappily. "I thought I was close to finding my chosen right before those bandits showed up... now I'm not getting _anything_ from this area anymore."

"Well, compasses can become confused or redirected in the presence of an intense power source or magnet." Timur chirped. "Maybe it's because of all these Ghosts and our hunter friend here!"

"I have a name, you know." she scowled at him.

"Well, you haven't told me it yet, and 'hunter' sounds so much better than 'outlaw'. Especially when you clearly aren't one." he said.

"I have powers; I'm an outlaw." she told him.

"'Outlaw' is a word used to describe powered gunslingers and bandits with the Light. You're not a bandit. You clearly love pointy projectiles," he pointed at the quiver of normal arrows hooked on the wall, "enough that you can't fall under the category of gunslinger, either. 'Hunter', much better describes you. So, _hunter_ , what's you name, exactly?"

"... Allison."

* * *

She couldn't tell if she was the idiot, or if he was. She could be the idiot, because she had foolishly chosen to follow him, though at a distance. He could be the idiot, because for all his intelligence, he was entirely the dorkiest person she had ever met.

This ravine was notorious for breaking horses' legs, and he had hopped off the creature to gut an old _car_ , of all things! Why would he care!? Cars were useless, there were no roads anymore. Horses were invaluable, as were pikes, if you had the guts to steal from the Fallen. The truly lucky could find or build a Sparrow.

 _If he keeps this up, he'll be dead eventually._ And so would all those Ghosts.

"I kind of like him." D'Artagnan commented from her side.

"He's a dork." she shot back.

"A _smart_ dork. If there really is a camp under the Traveler, they could need him something fierce! His theories on the Light are sound, and he knows how to make _electricity_!" Those who were cruel would gut dead Ghosts for a power source. But the night before heading out, and excited(and more so than usual) Timur had demonstrated a simple circuit, which he had completed using the magnet he'd gotten. He'd lit a light bulb.

She rolled her eyes. He was a dead man.

* * *

She watched as he struck a trade deal with the next village, in exchange for fixing their aqueduct. And improving it at the same time, if the excited looks on the villagers faces were anything to go by. As she understood it, he'd set up a system to keep it from freezing over as easily.

At the village after that, he sacrificed his simple circuit to restore power to an old heater, which he promptly gave to an elderly woman who lived in the moldiest shack in the village.

Soon after that, the other D'Artagnan found his chosen. Timur brought her to the next village, and used the old car parts he'd scavenged from the ravine all those weeks ago to make a jury-rigged communications device. Allison beat a hasty retreat when a ship with the Iron Lord's blazon descended a day afterwards. She supposed there were worse people to contact for such an occasion. Timur made himself scarce as well by the time they arrived.

She lost track of him after that, and decided she'd been away from her own village long enough; it was time to bring her curiosity quest to a close and return. She waited until the Iron Lords left, and entered the village to barter for supplies. Just some water for the road, and light rations of smoked fish from the nearby river. A chosen didn't have to eat as much as a normal human, but she still liked to keep a solid diet. That, and people would notice if she never ate but stayed so healthy.

But as she was starting to head back... she heard hooves pounding the forest floor.

Her head snapped in the direction of the sound just in time to see Timur's horse charging in from her right.

"WHOA!" she shouted. It reared, and it took her a solid ten minutes for her to calm it down enough that she could see the blood on it's saddle. The muttered a swear under her breath, and mounted the beast, steering the nervous creature in the direction it had come.

It took half the day to reach the site. Dirt was kicked up, there were four bodies she didn't recognize attesting that Timur wasn't as much a pushover as she'd thought he was. D'Artagnan flashed in next to her.

"Life signs, two O'clock!" he warned. She dismounted, and at first, she didn't see him. He was just a pile of mud and blood, unrecognizable. A small light hovered over him as she rushed to his side.

"Allison?" It was Kitty, her shell smudged with mud.

"Where's the rest of you?" she rolled him over onto his back, pressing her fingers to his throat and leaning over to check his breathing. His pulse was thready, and the breath she felt on her ear was faint.

"He told them to fly north as far as they could. I... I couldn't leave him, not after..." Kitty's voice wavered. "They-they had a gun. The lead bandit had a gun. A _working_ gun. Timur took out four of them, and then their leader, i-it was like he was bored... just... _shot_ him and walked away like it meant nothing!"

She tried to find the hole. She found it; it punched clean through his chest, near the heart but not quite a kill hit; he would have lived if she had gotten here sooner and brought him to the village in time.

"But it's okay." she looked up at the suddenly assured voice of Kitty. The Ghost looked at her steadily, and when she spoke next, her voice was not dissimilar to that of a child who _knew_ something to be true, and was assuring themselves out loud. "I'm not a broken compass. I was just... standing on the pole this whole time. That's why I couldn't leave him. I... have have to make our link. Once he dies."

Timur stopped breathing, but she kept her hand on his shoulder. _How fitting that he should be one of us._

Kitty parted her shell, her light pulsed outwards... and a new chosen took a heaving gasp for life.

* * *

"W-where are we g-going?" Timur asked through chattering teeth as they rode through the night. The air was frozen, and she could feel him shivering against her back, even his arms trembling as they remained wrapped around her waist. He wasn't used to freezing to death yet, so she let the pathetic instinct continue. A Ghost made death by temperature differences a trifle to go through, an inconvenience at worst. The cold no longer bothered her so much as the mud he had gotten all over her cloths, now dry and flaking everywhere, making the horse itchy and complacent.

"Nearby village; not the one you were at. They'll recognize you. You still have that transmitter?" she asked.

"H-how do _y-you_ know about _that_?" He wound up answering his own question before she could even draw a breath to speak. "You've b-been f-f-following us? _Watching_ u-us? N-not creepy at a-ll."

"I only did it because you looked like a dork, acted like one, and behaved like a gullible child who didn't think the worst of anyone." she told him bluntly. "Let alone like someone who carried a sword; you certainly didn't use it when we met. I knew you would get yourself killed eventually, so I followed you. Like it or not, I was right about one thing."

"And what's th-that?"

"You got yourself killed."

His tremors increased.

"Get used to it, Timur. People like us? We die a lot more after the first time than we did before we had Ghosts. It's a fact; you have more than one life to spend now. And from what I've seen, you're the kind of person to spend those lives willingly." she shrugged. "If I were you, I'd contact the Iron Lords."

"No." there was no tremble on his lips when he said it. "I... I can't. I can't b-be one of th-them; n-not possibly! I-'m not a h-hero. I don't even know... I don't even know _wh-what_ I am! I d-don't know if I'm e-even a Warlock or a Hunter!"

"Hunter? There's no such thing as chosen called 'Hunters'." she corrected him. "You mean Titans, or Outlaws."

"Hunter sounds better than outlaw." he reaffirmed, in an echo of their old conversations. "It m-m-makes you all sound like criminals. _Y-you_ aren't a criminal. W-well, maybe y-you're a stalker."

She didn't laugh.

"I-I-I got it a-after." she twisted to look at him. His face was barely visible on the moonless night. "The Sword. I-I g-got it in the village after y-yours."

"Impressive cutting, for a newby." She commented, putting her eyes back on the trail. "Maybe you were destined for this."

"Maybe." his voice was barely a whisper. His arms tightened around her, and he pressed closer against her to try and stay warm up. He would fail, she thought bitterly. Tonight was meant to be cold and hard. Tonight was his first night. Tonight's ice was his trial by fire, as he set along a trail not too different than the one they were traveling on. A trail to becoming something more.

She let off a small pulse of Light to comfort him, though.

* * *

A hand touched her neck, and slid to rest in the crook of her shoulder. She groaned in displeasure as the cold metal of his ring sent goosebumps along her skin.

"I hate you..." she mumbled. _Were five more minutes too much to ask?_ He'd kept her awake all night with his metal wielding, and she'd been out for weeks scouting Venus beforehand.

"Why'd you marry me, then?" he asked with a tremor of humor in his voice.

"Perun pressured me." Thirty years ago, she wouldn't have pictured herself an Iron Lord... let alone married to the intelligent idiot she'd saved from bandits. She'd come a long way from being a nothing. Timur had started his early years as a chosen _naming every freaking thing he came across with his powers_. And naming everything she was and did, too.

He'd formed a sort of... standard once he finally plucked up the courage to signal the Iron Lords. He'd practically gotten down on his knees and begged her to come with him. She'd said she would 'give it a chance'. She hadn't trusted any of them at first sight. Now, she would put her life in any of their hands if it came to it.

As for Timur... she wasn't sure how it happened. Maybe she was attached to his obsession with classical music. Maybe there was something so free about the way he could tell you the first hundred numbers of pi, but still have trouble finding the sunglasses he was wearing. Maybe it was because he gave her a name. The names Timur ave to things were now the names all the Iron Lords used for things. As such, she, and Perun, were now Hunters, not outlaws. She was a Nightstalker, to be specific.

"Scoot, lovely." He squeezed in next to her on the couch, with much rearranging from the ultimately comfortable position she'd been in. She tried to find it again with her head resting against his chest. She could hear his heart thumping beneath his robes. "How did the scout go?"

"Found something odd." she told him quietly, plucking at the fabric of her night shirt. Timur's warmth was intoxicating, she found herself growing sleeping yet again because of him. He let off a small pulse of Light, and she responded in kind. With the evolution of the chosen, came evolved ways of physical communication, between other chosen and between Ghosts.

"Funny odd, or bad odd?" he asked.

"Not sure yet. Radegast wants you and I to check it out with Saladin in a few days." she told him. She shut her eyes, and felt his chin dip to rest on her head as he grew tired as well. "Best ways to describe it... kinda looked like a vault."

* * *

"These plates... I have a feeling about them." Timur said. He was crouched on one of said plates, brows knit together as he put together this new puzzle. He looked up at Saladin. "See if there are any more."

The Titan nodded, patting his friend on the shoulder before ascending the hill. She watched as Timur and Kitty took scans and tried to pry a piece of plating off the outer ring of the vex technology. She took a deep breath. _Here goes another try..._

"Timur. I really think we should talk about... _it_." she started. His right hand slipped, and blood welled from where he cut himself on the vex brass. She saw his adam's apple convulse as he swallowed hard.

"I'd rather not." his voice was quiet, subdued, not Timur-ish at all. It always was whenever she tried to get him talking about it. It was stupid... but it hurt him. And, quite frankly, the other Iron Lords, the other chosen, had a right to know as well. And keeping a hurt like that locked up wasn't healthy. There were some things a Ghost couldn't heal... and heartbreak was one of them. He'd gone usually silent for days after they found out, after he'd found out, all those years ago.

They couldn't have children. Chosen couldn't have children, they were all steril, all of them. They'd spent some years trying... and one frustrated day, he'd looked to get to the bottom of the problem. He'd thrown the only datapad the Iron Lords had out the window and into the river when it gave him the results. Timur was the kind of man who'd wanted children ever since he _was_ a child... and she could give him herself for centuries, but she could not give him kids. That possibility had been stripped away from them from the moment they died the first time.

It was hard to ignore the way the truth ripped at him. It was hard to ignore the guilt on her own mind whenever she saw Perun steal fond glances, wishful, maybe hopeful glances at the children of the nearby village. It was hard to ignore the way Saladin and Jolder looked at each other, and to know they had no idea, either of them, that their status as chosen had taken as much as it had given.

But she couldn't find it in her heart to tell them. And so it came down to her to convince Timur to move past his grief and send them down the same spiral he was in, for their own good. So they could complete that spiral, and come to terms. Because if they didn't find out now, they would find out later, and they would put two and two together. They would figure out he'd been holding out on them... and that confrontation wouldn't end well for anyone.

"Timur." She crouched down next to him, placing her hands on his shoulders, and pulsed her Light against his own assertively. Gently, but assertively. "We can't carry this forever. They deserve to know you looked into it... and they deserve to know what you found. No matter how terrible it is."

"Not here. Not now." he whispered.

 _"Timur, I found two more. One at the entrance, another nearby."_ Saladin's voice interrupted their conversation. Timur cleared his throat before replying.

"They seem to activate when we stand on them. Lets try activating all three and see what happens." he said. He looked up at her. "Stand on the other plate?"

"This conversation isn't over." she told him, before standing and trotting in the direction Saladin had gone.

"I know it isn't..." she barely herd him murmur.

* * *

Standing on the plates had made the vex angry. It also opened the vault door, much to Timur's excitement. They now strode alone foreign passage ways of vex design, the way lit by Allison and Saladin, both of whom held their Light in their hands while their Warlock companion dawdled to inspect every pebble they came across.

"Oh, why did I have to get the one who's fascinated by _dirt_?" Allison bemoaned.

"Not just any dirt!" her husband chirped back as they came into a vast cavern. "Vex dirt! Acasual dirt! No-longer-dirt-in-the-sense-we-understand-it! _Fantastic_ dirt!"

"Yes, we have all been made aware of your love of dirt." Saladin rolled his eyes, sending sparks of arc light through the air with his hand, leaving a file trail of particles that continued to glow.

"Put it on a throw pillow." His Ghost joked wryly.

"Dart, want to see what's out there?" She asked her own Ghost. He flashed in, and flew out over the cavernous drop presented to them. There was another cave entrance on the other side of the platform, but she wanted to be certain they weren't missing anything.

"There's an entrance, just twenty feet from the edge. I can tell you when to let off a burst." D'Artagnan called back. She nodded, and looked back at her companions.

"Anyone want to take the fun way around instead of the boring old cave entrance?" She asked. Timur raised his hand.

"Me, me! ME! ME! ME!" he bounced on the balls of his feet, more than ever looking like an overexcited school child. He took a running leap off the cliff, twisting in midair as he did so. "Geronimo!"

Saladin sighed. "I wish you wouldn't encourage him."

"As his wife, there's a balance; I need to encourage him or he'll hate me. I also have to stop him from blowing our base up." She chuckled. "It's a complicated life filled with missing eyebrows and occasionally being hooked up to amp measurement devices... at least, if you're Gheleon."

The Arcstrider had _not_ enjoyed Timur's quest to find out if the Hunter's voltage output could rival a nuclear reactor.

She jumped after Timur, listening to her Ghost's signal, and let out a burst of light to do a 'second jump', and land on the new ledge that had been hiding under their feet. Her favorite Warlock was already examining the walls. Deep from within said walls, from somewhere along the tunnels, she thought she heard a sound. One she couldn't describe... something un-vex. Something... dark... if she had any words to describe it...

"Darkrose?" she nearly jumped at the sound of Saladin's voice directly in her ear. Darkrose had become her nickname, supposedly because of her skills with the void. Tinasha-3 was in a similar predicament.

"We gonna get moving?" Timur inquired. Had neither of them heard that sound? The vex were connected to the same Darkness that cause the collapse, if that Darkness still lingered here... she had a feeling it did.

"I think we need to go back. Get backup." she said.

"Why? The vex are of no problem." Timur's brow knit together again, this time in worry. "Or perhaps that's far too convenient?"

He fiddled with the amulet around his neck, running his thumb over the swirling patterns of metalwork as he did so. He'd made her one similar to it. "Yes, maybe we should..."

"We came down here." Saladin told them firmly. "We need to scout this tunnel, at least a little, before we return."

Another unearthly screech. This time, all three chosen heard it.

"We need to confirm that." The Titan's voice was a hoarse whisper that swallowed terror. She pulled her bow, taking point as both her fellow Iron Lords readied their weapons. Another sound as they came upon a myriad of complicated platforms, the drop leading at least a hundred foot fall. The sound again, this time closer. She held up a hand. She couldn't see the Darkness. If one of it's agents was here... she'd heard some remained, nightmare stories meant to scare children. She'd never seen one before. She put away her bow, letting it dissipate into the void, and turned herself to shadow and mist before stepping outwards.

When you existed as nothing more than particles of void, your relationship with the dimensions of the physical became... complicated.

But even the gifts, the invisibility, the invulnerability that shadestep gave her, could not protect her from what she found herself face-to-face with on the third platform down. She could not repress her scream. She brought up her bow, returning to the physical plane so as to work with it, using it at a sheild between herself and the dark, gangling creature she now faced.

"ALLISON!" she heard Timur screaming her name. She tried to stab the Darkness with an arrow of void, but _it grabbed her arm_.

"RUN! BY ALL YOU LOVE, RUN!" She screamed, terror mixing with agony and anguish as it wretched her off the platform. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Timur, kicking and screaming, struggling against the arms of the Titan that held him back, before both of them were out of sight, and she fell to the abyss.

 _My love, forgive me..._

Her vision went dark suddenly.

* * *

 _Here it is, my very first_ serious _Destiny fanfiction! I hope you all get sucked in. And we start off with my own little original character, be sure to let me know what you think of Lady Darkrose. This fic will predominantly feature Asher Mir, though, so... I hope you like your reading salty. Me and my clan call him Lefty the Salt King, King of all Salt, for a reason._

 _All the featured Ghosts in this chapter got their names from the Chronicles of Narnia, Three Musketeers, Wolves of the Beyond, and X-men. Yes, X-Men(Xavier). I may update this chapter late, I'll make you all aware if I do._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	2. Oats in the Water

_zWarlock: Glad I've peaked your interest! Yeah, I'm a bit of a lore jocky. I can't tell you how long I spent in the strike playlist just so I could hear as many of the Pyramidion dialogues as possible. The hardest part is deciding exactly what happened to Ashers fireteam; I keep hearing people saying 'they're dead', but from what he says in the strike, it sounds like they just dropped out of contact or something... I hope you continue to read!_

* * *

 _Oats in the Water- Ben Howard_

 _"I'll take the long way around, I'll find my own way down..."_

"Are yous sure we want to work for this guy? I've heard he's a bit... disagreeable." asked the Ghost of Bernard-8, or commonly know as 'Bear'.

"Most Warlocks are." he shrugged. "But if he's got the glimmer he says he does, we can finally get that rifle."

"Everybody wants the Regime these days. Have you noticed you talk about it ten times a day, yet?" their Bladedancer companion, Clary, asked with a roll of her eyes.

He snorted in response, and stopped at the door. The building was rented as a 'private lab' for a member of the Gensym Order. One of the windows was shattered, and the in-pieces laptop scattered on the ground outside it clearly told the story of why and how. A little concerning, considering this Warlock was to be his employer for the next few days at least. He knocked on the door, from behind which came strange, loud noises.

They got louder after he knocked, eventually coming to a loud, crashing banging sound, accompanied by colorful swearing, from both a male and female voice... and in at least ten different languages as well, to boot. He glanced at Clary. _Well, this is going to be interesting._

The door burst open, revealing an Awoken man with a dark triangular marking on his face, cold blue eyes, and dark hair. Beside him hovered a fiery-colored Ghost with bright starbursts of yellow at the tips of her nodes. Though this was just an assumption of their natural appearances, for currently both of them looked quite like they'd been a bit too close to an explosion at the moment, and he wondered when the Ghost would notice her Guardian's eyebrows were missing.

"What..." fumed the Warlock.

"In the name of all that's holy..." fumed his Ghost.

"ARE YOU DOING!?" the Guardian finished.

"WE SPENT THREE HOURS TRYING TO GET THAT PARA CAUSAL FIELD TO STABILIZE!"

"DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE BY BREAKING MY CONCENTRATION!?"

"THIS WHOLE BLOCK COULD BE A MILE-DEEP CRATER RIGHT NOW!"

"I would LOVE to know, what is SO _URGENTLY IMPORTANT_ , that you had to risk the _vaporization_ of everything within a five mile radius!?"

Bear held up the 'help wanted' bounty.

"We came to blow up Fallen while you set up a radioactive... doo-hicky." he glanced at the paper and then a gain at the Warlock, who was bristling a little less.

"It is not a 'doo-hicky'!" He snatched the poster out of Bear's hand. "It's a thermoluminescent dosimeter accompanied by a Geiger Counter, and they _monitor_ radiation; not create it!"

"Whatever." Bear waved it off, trying to stay calm after the ostensibly erratic display of personality. "We're just here for the glimmer."

"You Hunters usually are." the Awoken looked them both up and down. "Nightstalker and Bladedancer?"

"Yes..." Clary cast her Exo companion a 'is he serious?' look. "How'd you tell?"

"The kukri on your belt. Generally favored as a conducting agent." he answered airily. "And the fact that your companion has so few weapons on his person. Why Nightstalkers _insist_ on going in so minimally armed, I will never understand. No wonder Tevis Larsen was killed."

The redjacks had found the body after a crucible map was swarmed by vex, suddenly and without warning. There was doubt as to whether Pantheon would ever be used again. Clary bristled at the cutting remark about Tevis, and Bear tensed. The body of the centuries-old Nightstalker wasn't even buried yet, and this Warlock had the gall to insult the dead!?

What was wrong with him!?

"If you're concerned with my load out, we could just leave." he said, turning just a little. The warlock's hands twitched, and he shifted his weight to the left.

"No, no. It'll do." his Ghost hovered closer to him, seemed to finally notice the missing eyebrows, and let off a discrete pulse of Light, slowly growing the back. He didn't seem to notice. _Wonder what that says about how many times he's had things blow up in his face..._

"When and where?" Bear asked. Better get down to business; the sooner this contract was finished, the better.

"Venus, Ishtar, my Ghost will send yours the exact coordinates." he reached to some place inside, seemed to check something, and then looked back at the two Hunters. "Eight sharp. Don't be late. Now... _leave_!"

With that the door was slammed in their faces.

"Well... he's awfully cheery."

* * *

There was something particularly... unusual about the air of Venus today. Asher Mir was not a superstitious man by any accounts, but there was no denying the cold pricks on the back of his neck. It was like before a storm, the pressure in the atmosphere, the smell of coming rain, the hairs on your arm raising right before you got struck by lightning.

"Asher?" his Ghost could feel it, too. He tried to put it out of his mind and focus on the task at hand, but still let off a reassuring Light pulse for his Ghost. There was nothing to fear... it was just the chemicals of the sulfur drifts interfering with the fight or flight instincts.

 _But the Hunters can feel it, too._ Countered the irrational part of his mind, the part he liked to keep locked up because it was generally useless. The other two Guardians were tense, like springs tightened too far, or snakes coiled for the strike. The Exo stood atop a large boulder, and the bladedancer paced along the perimeter while he, Asher, ran his tests.

So far, they had met no resistance. Not a single vex or fallen. Not one.

No wonder the Hunters were jumpy. He, however, was far more rational than any Hunter. He was a Warlock, and therefor had a heightened sense of place, which meant if there was something, say, coming to kill them all, rip the very souls out of their bodies, and scatter their remains from here to the Reef, he would naturally be the first to know about it.

Naturally.

"Caroline, what are the ambient reading for this area?" his Ghost floated up, shell parting, and her Light pulsed slightly as she scanned the area.

"Hey! Hey, Hunters!" she called after her scan. Both heads turned to face the studious pair. "Can I talk to your Ghosts for a moment? Are you guys getting the same neutrino readings I am?"

" _No_ , because you haven't given us the chance to scan anything yet." said the Ghost of the female Hunter(Clara, Clair, something with a 'C' in it, he was sure) with a roll of his eye.

"Rude." Caroline huffed. She suddenly stiffened, and at the same time, the 'moment before lightning strikes' feeling intensified. The only way for there to be lightning at a time and place like this, with these weather conditions, that he could think of, was a series of freak atmospheric phenomenon that-

His mind was wiped blank of science and logic as pure instinct sent him to the ground, as the Exo shouted 'unknowns, incoming', as his Ghost shouted a warning. A sound like screams and metal forks being scraped across plates, like every soul in hell screaming out at once; that was all he heard for the next few moments, along with a pressure like reality itself was a fragile wooden frame bending, threatening to break under an immense pressure.

He felt like he might get ripped apart at any moment, and his irrational, dark thoughts about being disemboweled by a monster seemed quite sane and accurate all the sudden. He almost immediately felt the weight of immense Darkness in the area crash over him, and he tried to crawl away from the reality-rending feeling, the... anomaly that had opened where he had been standing moments before.

And just as suddenly as it had stared, it stopped, and was replaced by new sounds. It took him a few moments to orientate, and recognize the noise of vex, but he was too late trying to roll over. and arm himself. A metal foot stomped down on his leg, and he screamed as bone shattered.

A lance of void immobilized the minotuar, and, while it staggered, Asher took the opportunity to roll over, draw his sidearm, and pump it full of heavy caliber rounds until the mag ran dry. _DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE! DIE!_

It took him a few moments to flick from 'kill-to-survive' mode back to 'analytical' mode; this was not a normal vex... and neither were it's companions!

"Heal me! Heal me!" he yelled, trying to scramble back as fast as he could with his broken leg providing an obstacle.

"QUIT YELLING AT ME I'M TRYING NOT TO GET US KILLED!" his Ghost snapped back as the void anchor began to dissipate. "A little _COVER_ FROM OUR HIRED HANDS WOULD BE NICE!"

Knives flew into the heads of each not-vex, and they each dissipated in an implosion of energy. Asher clenched his teeth as his femur healed with a series of sharp cracking sounds, and the pain ceased like someone turning off a faucet. He reloaded and scrambled to his feet as the sounds of battle continued all around him.

 _What are these creatures? What are they..._

* * *

"In the space of thirty-six hours, the Reef is crippled, the Vanguard is in disarray, inter-dimensional _gremlins_ controlled by a paracausal force have infiltrated and extrapolated resources both living and positional, AND..." Asher threw several spread sheets off the table and pulled a larger one out from under them. "CAROLINE!"

"AND we have two grumpy Hunters who want pay for a job that didn't get done." his Ghost added from where she was monitoring the reading from the sample of 'Taken goop' they had gotten from Venus. "And the city is on lock down. So we can't make it up to them. Great."

"Not THAT!" he gasped. "The other thing! About the sporadic neutrino emissions!"

"Oh, yes; those anomalous neutrino emissions destroyed our Geiger Counter... and everything else." the Ghost snorted. "Stupid dimensional rifts..."

"So now, I not only have to waste money on those Hunters, I now require a new dosimeter, a computer-GHA! Caroline, just make the list!" he spread the paper out on the floor, and looked up at his guest, scowling, but not with anger directed at them. "Have I omitted anything?"

"You have summed up our situation." Eris Morn said dryly. She was one of the few people he tolerated, or liked, for that matter. Most Guardians avoided her, she'd been rotated into the Hidden but never did anything for them, she was usually confined to the Tower(but no-one need know she was here), she was considered creepy, taboo, dramatic, and possibly insane. Yes, she could be dramatic, but she had seen some stuff, so that earned her some leeway in that department, but other than that she'd never come across as 'taboo' or 'creepy' to him. Let alone insane; people could sometimes mistake knowledge for insanity( _that_ , he'd experienced firsthand, the term 'mad scientist' had been thrown his way at times), and if you stopped staring and actually _listened_ to her, Eris' knowledge was invaluable.

And not just in the works of the hive and the dark, if you knew her well. For a former Hunter, she was surprisingly well-learned.

"That fool, Cayde, managed to obtain the technology to infiltrate the Dreadnought." she told him. "But the path to Oryx is blocked... by an ascendant rift."

"And herein lies the problem of making a Guardian ascendant." the Warlock mused. He stood and began a rush to find another piece of paper in accordance to the one he'd just laid down. "What are your ideas?"

"Hive become ascendant by collecting the tithes of their underlings; through the sword logic." she explained. "A large enough tithe from a commander would grant them access to the ascendant realm."

"Could we steal the tithes? Pass off as a commander coming to make his dues?" Asher rolled a stepladder up to a tall shelf covered in various wires and more papers. He climbed up, and began moving both aside in his search for the right article.

"Toland once devised himself a way to do so. But no... ordinary Guardian would be able to do it." she paused, and Asher looked at her with an expression of warning on his face. "They would have to be so bathed in darkness they were unsavable afterwords. I would not wish that fate on any other."

"Well, _you_ ," he pointed at her firmly, "are _not_ , repeat, _not_ going to go running around in the ascendant realm to kill Oryx with no Light and no Ghost."

"And how do you know I was considering that?" she asked wryly.

"You're a Hunter." he deadpanned. "I know how you wor-CONFOUND IT ALL!"

There was a mighty crash as Warlock, shelf, stepladder and all came down violently. Eris heaved a sigh as paper flew everywhere.

"Really, again?" Caroline commented. "I need to find you a wife..."

"For that last time, I do NOT need a wife!" Asher yelled, face turning plume purple.

"At least if you had a woman in your life, _I_ wouldn't be the one cleaning up after you!" the Ghost said as she flew around, pulsing and making papers disappear in a sparkle of transmat. "Tell him, Eris."

"We have larger concerns than you Guardian's love life." the ex-Hunter chided.

"Thank you!" all he got in return was a three-eyed withering glance as he tried to untangle himself from the pile of wires and broken shelving. Eris sighed, stood, picked her way across the room towards him, and offered her knife. His only response was a grunt as he took the weapon, and, grumbling about more things he was going to have to buy later.

"How do you trick the sensors for this thing?" he had never asked, but it was interesting; technically Eris wasn't allowed a weapon(Not that he was about to go blabbing).

"Hiding it with my shard." her hand drifted to the pouch where she kept the hive shard she always carried, glowing green. He'd asked what it was, exactly. She'd had trouble articulating it's significance, so he'd left it at that. "It's signature hides the metal."

He paused in cutting a cable, as something in his brain went 'click'. He looked up at Eris.

"Would that trick work on a Guardian?"

* * *

A hand grabbed Asher by the back of his robes and threw him forwards behind a decapitated Hive statue.

"RUN!" the Hunter yelled, rolling to dodge the claws of the massive ogre as it tried to crush the Guardian.

This here, was a complicated situation.

Cayde wanted scouts on the Dreadnought, Nightstalkers specifically, Zavala wanted observations on the Skyburners and Hive fortifications, and Ikora wanted the sharpest minds on the double to translate and observe runes, fluctuations, and all kinds of inter-dimensional nonsense. This ship was the flying definition of inter-dimensional nonsense.

Hence why Asher Mir had been hiding in a disgusting cave, in conjunction with an operation by the very two Hunters he'd worked with on Venus. He was only here to observe the readings collected by the Exo(Bernie, Barry, Ben; something along those lines) as he scouted the area. Which left Asher stuck in the cave with his partner...

At least until things went wrong that was. It began as some sort of Hive summoning ritual, and had ended with the Nightstalker running for his life, until he was cornered. None the less, he had managed to hold out until Asher and Clary arrived.

Unfortunately, and impossibly, after being turned into a Shadowshot pincushion, and getting blasted by a _very_ well-aimed Nova Bomb, _it still wasn't dead_!

"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'VE BEEN TRYING TO DO!?" he yelled, scrambling for the exit. "DATE IT!?"

"Bear, it's still following us!" Clary shouted, glancing over her shoulder.

"Stop looking back!"

"Worry about Asher; he's running in a dress!"

"IT IS NOT A DRESS! THEY. ARE. ROBES!"

"POTATOE/PATATOE!" it was funny, this was only their second mission together, the last one had been a flop, and already the she-Hunter was picking up on the complex language that was _yelling_.

But the Huntress' words turned out to be prophetic, or so he thought they would be as one mound of chitin succeeded in tripping him up.

 _"Asher, you clutz!"_ his Ghost snapped. Out of the corner of his HUD, he saw lightning wrap around the Huntress(CLARY, that was it, wasn't it?). He rolled away from the massive fists of the beast, which slammed down inches from his head, and brought his scout rifle to bear, aiming for its head as best he could with the added pressure of watching the oncoming army of thralls swarming towards them as backup.

Clary slipped between the ogre's legs as it staggered from the shots, cutting at its hard flesh with her Arcblade. It roared with pain(why did it sound like it _enjoyed_ it?), and fell to one knee as Asher scrambled to his feet and backed away, trying to pick off as many thrall as he could before they could close the distance.

"There are too many of them!" he could feel the ambient Light Clary's super left behind; there wasn't enough to support his own abilities yet, but if they could hold out just a little longer...

"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" Bear(now he was certain, it was 'Bear', what an odd name) yelled. "Wait until they're all right on top of that thing, I've got a trick up my sleeves!"

"Does it involve your bow and a tactical grenade?" Asher thumbed the said grenade hanging on his belt. Now would be an excellent time to put it to use.

"I was thinking full blown space magic; bring down the entire damn house, wait for my Light to charge yours." The Hunter growled, moving into the open, aiming before the shot. That was the thing with Nightstalkers; they always aimed _before_ they summoned their bow.

"Clary, move!" A weapon of void erupted into existence. "Now, Asher!"

Feeling his light boil eagerly as the arrow flew, the Warlock reached into the void himself, and ran into the open as Clary ran at them, a streak of lightning. Void spun hungry at his fist, and he threw the buildup of pure energy directly after the now-anchored enemies. He saw very few things in the chaos of the next moments, and felt only the sensation of void sucking at reality, and someone yanking him backwards by the back of his robes.

What he saw, was thrall stumbling over each other as they all blundered mindlessly into the Hunter's trap. His Nova Bomb hit, and the ogre-along with everything else-erupted into an extradimensional particular cataclysm. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, arms thrown over his head as the din continued. Eventually his bothersome instincts decided it was safe to lift his head, coughing as the dust cleared. Clary and Bear lay nearby, the latter already dusting himself off, the former still staring at where the horde of enemies had been before.

"You know..." she said after a while, her teammates looking at her as they caught their breath. "We should probably tell command that part of the Dreadnaught... is no longer _part_ of the Dreadnaught."

Indeed. Even as they watched, part of the ceiling, and a good chunk of the walls, fell away with a crash and explosion of dust and debris that caused all three Guardians to shield their faces, even though they were well-protected by their helmets.

"Oryx can bill us." Asher snorted. The heads of both Hunters jerked in his direction, and for a few moments the three of them just stared at each other.

Asher was _not_ the first one start laughing. He _wasn't_.

* * *

"You're certain?" it was one of those 'say it isn't so' days. Days he thought he had long since left behind him. There was a _point_ to not having a permanent fireteam. You should never get too close, or attached, to the variables of an equation; any number of values could change.

 _Or be removed..._ Nothing could stop the incessant tapping. He tried to stop, but his right index finger kept pounding the table surface anyway. He'd recommended their services. Besides, it could never hurt to have a Nightstalker, a Guardian born and bred for hiding, sneaking, and vanishing away, when on a suicidal mission to the depths of the moon, in the very same tunnels Eris had been trapped in for decades...

And it was looking more and more like he'd sent Bear and Clary to their deaths, along with that 'golden boy' Titan of the Vanguard's.

 _"We are still trying to make contact."_ Eris told him over the comms. _"But you should know, Asher... this is how_ it _happened. The likelihood they are alive dwindles with every heartbeat."_

 _"You know, you really aren't helping!"_ the Hunter Vanguard(who he didn't know the name of and really didn't care about) snapped. _"You're underestimating Bear and his gal; they're the best of the best, it'll take more than some interdimensional goo monsters to put them down."_

"Try frequency K-983, on an oscillating pattern." he said. He was surprised his voice sounded so... normal. He didn't feel normal, and his hands were trembling. Nine... okay, perhaps a dozen or so missions together... it shouldn't mean anything. They were still just strangers. That night out at The Hide, a Hunter tavern, meant nothing. Everyone held a toast with their co-workers every now and then, right? It was like that.

 _"We are going to lose them... just like_ _Eriana..."_ he took a deep breath. He really should back out of this conversation. But his help was needed, he alone had the sharp enough mind for the job of cutting through the hive 'magic'. So be it.

"Try wide-range Ghost handshake signal." How many things had he suggested by now? He really should spend more time with Eris, he didn't understand hive interference as well as he would like to. Perhaps that should be his next project?

 _"I think we've got them!"_ Asher sat back and let out a deep breath. _Finally!_

"I'll contact you later, Eris." he said before flipping the comm system off. He dug the palm of his hand into his forehead; he had the headache to end all headaches.

"Just admit it; you're getting attached." Caroline piped up from the far end of the table. He glared at her.

"Shut up."

* * *

"Why did we think this was a good idea again?" Bear asked as he dove behind the pillar to join Asher and Clary behind cover.

"The Pyramidions are connected; we must discern their purpose!" the Warlock reminded him.

"Next time, lets send one of your geeky drones instead; when we came into that cube field, I started wondering if I was on ecstasy or something." Clary said. She threw a grenade into the middle of the goblin units trying to flank them.

"Agreed!" Bear threw another grenade... this time at the massive vex mind that was trying to kill them.

"I would prefer it more if we focus less on the nature of the reality we've been placed in, and more on not falling into a radiolarian lake and burning to permanent cybernetic oblivion!" Asher snapped, fireing at the mind. There was no abdominal weak spot on his model, and he was still considering how wise-or unwise- it would be to shoot at it's head, so for now the gal as simply to slow or disable it.

And then see what was behind those confluxes it was guarding. Hopefully as fast as possible; getting trapped on an island in the middle of a vex lake within a variable reality, was not typically a situation he liked. Oh, he could spend years analyzing this place, but he'd much rather do that without getting killed.

"Asher, we're getting nowhere fast; we need to back off!" Bear shouted. It seemed for every vex they killed, two more took it's place!

"We need to know!" he countered.

"No, _you_ need to know!" Bear snapped. "Ever hear how curiosity killed the cat?"

"That depends on if you're Schrodinger." He saw an opening, and he took it, running to the far side of the island and sliding in behind a rock next to one of the confluxes. This was important! He could feel it! "Caroline, scan that thing, and lets go!"

He could agree they needed to leave as soon as possible, but they had to come back with _something_.

 _"Asher, you're going to get yourself killed!"_ Clary warned as his Ghost got to work.

"Not if I'm quick! Just keep Brakion off of me long enough for my Ghost to do her work." He was in a bad position right here, backed so close to the shore, a vex mind to one side and a possibly dangerous conflux forest to the other.

 _"Dammit, Asher!"_ Bear swore. _"We need to break your 'mad scientist' habit before it gets us all killed..."_

"Define what exactly would make a scientist mad." he retorted dryly. He wasn't a _mad_ scientist! He was true genius! Only the uneducated would define him as mad. Not that Bear was stupid; he was actually one of the smartest Hunters Asher had ever met. Perhaps that was why he was so tolerable.

"Asher, I'm getting some really weird readings from this thing..." he looked up at his Ghost. Her shell twisted with worry. "It's like... Oh...by the stars... I think there a Guardian trapped on the other side!"

"Asher, on your six!" Whatever Caroline had found, Brakion knew she had found it. He snatched his Ghost and held her close to his chest, preparing to make a run for it, only to find the mind had ignored the two Hunters completely. He nearly ran into it's leg, and he tried to dodge around it, but it gave him a powerful kick that nearly sent him into the conflux. Winded, he staggered to his feet, with nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but up, if he could glide high enough, he could get over the rock...

Brakion brought it's foot down, and he scrambled backwards to avoid it. He heard Clary scream his name... and then a burning sensation ripped through his body. He couldn't see, and all was silent.

Then his Ghost screamed.

Then... agony ripped through his hand. And that was only the beginning of the pain...

* * *

 _Annnnd I finally finished Asher's chapter! Yay! I hope you all appreciate the sacrifices I made in choosing to write an Asher-centric fic; I legit parked my Hunter next to him in-game and listened to His Saltyness for almost an hour taking notes._

 _I just wanted to get this chapter posted and out of the way. Now that both the prologues are done, I can finally get on to the actual story! Just as a warning, there may be a 'once a month' update schedule for now; I'm both busy, and addicted to Destiny, and leader of a very hyperactive clan(no joke; I have ADHD, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one...) that likes blowing things up. Combine that with that fact I'm also working on an ongoing Mass Effect fic that's gaining popularity, and that I'm also working on my own original novel, I'm a bit swamped._

 _Never the less, I will try to bring forth some awesome-quality writing, and I hope you guys all enjoy it!_

 _Asher's Ghost is named after Caroline Hershel, one of the most famous female scientists. Quite appropriately, she was an astronomer._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	3. Welcome to Your Life

_Everybody Wants to Rule The World- Tears for Fears_

 _"Welcome to your life, there's no turning back..."_

* * *

 _[Task: (Guard)complete.]\_

 _{Subtask: (completion of matrix)ongoing]\_

 _[Query: task origin]\_

 _[Collective response:(transfer of physical data)]\_

 _~Observation~Collective Response overridden by single unit]\_

 _~Observation~Subroutine not recognized]\_

Asher jerked awake, startled at first by both his surroundings and the sudden contrast to where he'd just been. He was in the Vanguard Outpost on Io, in his quarters. In his dream he had been guarding confluxes...

 _No._ He had to correct his thinking. I _was not guarding confluxes; Brakion was!_

First thing that he noticed, was that he'd fallen asleep at his desk. Again. Why was this the first thing he noticed? It was not a matter of bodily position, but because his back was _killing him_. He lifted his head, wincing and rubbing the back of his neck. _Dammit. Really should start using a bed..._ To make matters worse, his right arm had been dangling the whole night, resulting in intense pain in his shoulder.

Before, if he had woken at his desk, it would have been no big deal, there would have been little pain or soreness involved. Perhaps his Ghost would have powered down on top of his head, and given him the results of their latest test when she woke. Now, however, as he looked around, he found Caroline was not by his side. She rarely was. Sometimes she would wander off, and she never spoke. But today, she was here, even if she wasn't close by; she was near the door, staring at him.

"Caroline?" she didn't even blink. He sighed; sometimes he wondered if she even recognized him. All he knew for certain was that she was in an incomprehensible amount of pain. Part of him was always considering putting her out of her misery, but... no matter what, he just couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Even if she was lost to herself and to him, he couldn't do it. The only thing he could do, was seek answers; answers, and hopefully thus a way to reverse this perverted process the vex had afflicted upon them.

He rolled his stiff shoulders, and glanced in the mirror, frowning when he saw his reflection. Now, he was many things; a genius, amazing, maybe a little guilty, and okay FINE, perhaps a bit cantankerous, but he liked to think he had never been vain when it came to his appearance. Still... he hated the way he looked with this stupid arm grafted onto him, and he regretted the way the vex tech had changed his face. He could have sworn his hair was black before that day, and he could have sworn he had never looked so tired as he did now.

He'd been looking into it, as such; the way the vex could manipulate time around someone. He'd once heard someone say time was a predator... he couldn't help but agree now. That didn't stop him from wondering why he hadn't come out looking younger rather than older; legend had it, Pahanin, though traumatized, had come out of the Vault looking like a much younger Hunter.

That was only the first step in his quest. If he could understand how they had changed him, he could find a way to reverse it, surely. He had no desire to die a cripple after nearly a century of hard work and study; he still had a million other things to do, books to write, discoveries to make! Things to atone for...

 _Flash of a knife, a scream of terror, her face outlined in fire for one second, he swore he heard her say 'YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT' or was it the vex screaming at him no it was both why was this happening why couldn't he feel his arm why-_

He shook the images out of his head. The past was done. And unless you were vex, there was no going back... only moving forwards. Whether you liked it or not.

* * *

 _Eris,_

 _It's me. I'm not sure if this transmission will reach you, wherever you are. But if it does, I would like a reply. I could... use your help. You know what it's like to be changed. You might possibly be the only one who could understand, comprehend the things I now have to deal with._

 _I suppose I ought to fill you in, in case you missed anything. It has been nearly a year since I was afflicted, and three months, a week, and two days since I woke. It took that time for the infection to spread from the middle of my humerus, to my shoulder. It hurts if I let it hang for too long. It has been a week since the hospital released me. I'm steady on my feet now, but I still tire easily; the exercises I've been ascribed should help with that. Muscle atrophy doesn't go away over night, even if you're a Guardian._

 _About that; my powers aren't what they used to be, either. For curiosity's sake, I tried to Nova Bomb a small vex patrol the day I got here... okay, perhaps I wanted to see them MELT BEFORE MY EYES as well, but back to the point; it was weak._ I _was weak. Surely, this is part of my condition; my Light is fading. I think it might have something to do with Caroline._

 _As for her, she's... well. Okay, not well; she's in agony. But it's more like a silent scream. I can't believe I'm asking you this... but your Ghost... did he... suffer at all when he died? You know what, no; don't tell me. It's bad enough I'm envious of Pahanin; I don't need to be jealous for my Ghost's sake. She wouldn't want that._

 _I visited their graves before I left. Bear and Clary. Well, memorial I should say; there were no bodies. Just me laying in front of the Pyramidion in a shock. That, I remember. And other snippets, but most of it is a blur. I can't remember how they perished, exactly... and I don't think I want to. At least I don't have to live with that on top of everything else, but I wish I had at least managed to get out with Bear's cloak in one piece. Hunters have a superstition about torn cloaks of their dead; I don't believe it._

 _But I know you do. You're still one of them, even now, you and your knife and your cloak. Tell me... do you really think he will never find rest without the other half of it? I considered burning it, you know. Like we do with the bonds of dead Warlocks. Thus far, I have refrained. Perhaps it is to serve as my reminder._

 _Now... about me. The things I was hoping you could understand, comprehend. You say you hear whispers? That you could feel Oryx rending at you? I... I hear..._ them _. The vex. In my sleep, I... it was horrifying. Painful. It was like... I was them... and they were killing Guardians._ I _was killing Guardians. I didn't recognize them, or the place I was at but... even now their screams still haunt me. I'm still trying to decide if it was real or not. It happened last night, again. I wasn't killing this time. I was... guarding something. Brakion was guarding something._

 _It's the vex Minds I mostly hear, not so often the smaller units. When I'm awake, I feel like one of two magnets spinning in zee-gee with a compression field; both trying to get to the other, but unable to do so, constantly orienting, spinning around and around, unable to find my place. That is the most accurate description I can come up with. I wish you hadn't left the city. For the first time, I have nobody to speak to, and I'm beginning to wonder how you Hunters deal with it all._

 _Contact me at earliest possible convenience, Asher out._

He flipped the recorder off, and sent the message out across his and Eris' old channel. It was a Hidden frequency, so old nobody really used it any more, and it was what the two of them usually used to communicate. Some of the things they talked about... well, it wouldn't go over well with those ignorant Consensus zounderkites, both of them might have end up branded as Toland or worse, she might have been detained, and he might have would up as just one more in a long line of infamous Warlocks who stuck their noses where they shouldn't have. The darkest secrets of the hive were things some people weren't ready to hear about.

Nor were the things he saw in his sleep. His arm didn't hurt, not much; his nerves had transformed where they met the bio-circuitry. But in his sleep... the vex got to take the reigns. During the day, the pull of the Minds was a dull ache. He was in control. But at night, it was like the vex stole the keys to the jumpship and he was locked in a closet. The nightmares had been enigmatic, unclear when he was on Earth. But now? Now they had frightening clarity.

He missed the days when he didn't need sleep. Now, however, as the Darkness of the vex ate away at his powers, he was becoming just as helpless as any civilian, if not more so because his horrible vex hand was so clumsy and twitchy, making it difficult to use a gun(it didn't hep he wasn't left-handed). At least he still had his intellect. That was something.

He stretched in his seat. He really didn't want to go through the hassle of setting up. But he had to, even if it would be difficult. And he would set up as far away from the Jovian outpost as possible; he was sick of being stared at. Sure, it was fun to leer at the younger Guardians, give them a scare, but it was far less amusing than science.

* * *

For a few moments, the truck didn't move forwards. He simply halted it, and looked at the Pyramidion. So many things had gone wrong that day...

 _"You sure this is a good idea?" Bear asked, watching as the gate to the structure opened._

 _"Positive!" Asher clapped his hands together as the bronze plats parted, the Warlock eager to unravel whatever lay in wait for them. "There are several Pyramidions throughout the system; you can even see a larger one from the Crossroads arena. But nobody knows their true purpose... until today!"_

 _He spun to face his companions; Clary was doing her 'here he goes again' eye-roll, Bear already had his helmet on and was unreadable._

 _"Today, we solve the Pyramidions!" he told them excitedly._

 _"So, what exactly are we blowing up, poking, or electrocuting this time?" Clary crossed her arms._

 _"The Genesis Mind in charge of the superstructure. It may take two or thee trips to map the entire way down, readings from the inside of the Pyramidions have always been... sporadic. Fluxing gravity, x-waves, electromagnetic pulses in varying degrees of intensity..."_

 _Bear stared on silently._

 _"Peachy. Just... peachy, Ash. Downright peachy. You owe us drinks after this." Clary strode past him, hand on her knife. She was the only person, in the centuries since he'd first been revived, who could get away with calling him 'Ash'. Nicknames were her thing; it was how 'Bernard' became 'Bear'... and it was only because it was a bad habit that the Warlock Vanguard hadn't disintegrated her for calling her 'Cora'._

 _"Not if it's that cheap scotch again." Asher screwed up his face. "If you insist on poisoning your bodies, do it with the_ finer _things!"_

He shook his head. All of that was dead and gone. He needed to focus on today and tomorrow, and that was it. And after that, if he lived through all this... no more fireteams.

He'd been better off before he met those two.

He started the truck again. The long antenna rattled in the back, roughly a dozen of them. If he was going figure out how to reverse what Brakion had done, he needed to understand exactly _what_ Brakion had done... both to himself, and to Io. He had data, x-rays, and medical notes abound from the hospital that had monitored his slow deterioration during his coma, and beneath his sleeve, he'd clamped a monitoring device around his left forearm; all he needed was an access point to the Pyramidion. A place where he had easy access to the vex, and could get the clearest data as possible.

Naturally, 'setting up shop' right next to the Pyramidion was the place to start. He still wished Mars and Venus weren't so hostile; either one would have been more preferable to returning to Io. But the Cabal on Mars, and the Fallen on Venus, would have made things far too complicated. Out here, it was just the vex he would have to contend with, and they were mostly only active near the Pyramidion's gateway. He could handle a goblin intruder every once in a while, but with his powers weakening, hostile fallen crews and bulky cabal were things he didn't want to risk a fight against. He wasn't sure if Caroline could revive him if he died again; she certainly didn't _look_ like a Ghost who was capable of helping her Guardian.

He continued alone the road; scout reports stated there was a sort of safe pocket among some of the larger fossils next to the Pyramidion where he might set up to do his research. _They were right about one thing; it does have a good vantage point._ He thought as he slowed down. Tactically, it would hide him from any vex patrols coming up the path from the Pyramidion, if they sensed him at all. The program he planned on running through the signal boosters he'd brought with him would also, in theory, scramble their reading were they to scan for life-signs near to the Pyramidion; he wouldn't show up on their sensors, it would be like he didn't exist at all.

There was a fountain of radiolaria trickling down the side of the wall further back, peaking his interest. He had only ever gotten radiolaria samples from killing vex before, they had always come out contaminated or damaged, even with Bear's careful shooting in the mix. Here was an opportunity to study it in a controlled environment with a large amount to work with, and...

Why did he have a sudden craving for salt? He shook his head, realizing he'd been leaning a little precariously over the small pool, and got to work setting up his research post. He would have time to study the radiolaria later.

* * *

Asher put off a small burst of light, gliding down off the cliff, and took several steps back to admire his work. It had taken him nearly all day to set up the antenna, but he was finished. The equipment he'd brought from earth was the best on the market, so hopefully it would last him a long time... at least for the three years he thought it might take for the vex tech to kill him, depending on the lifestyle he kept from here on out. He had every intention of using every drop of his time finding a way to reverse his condition.

 _Well, a little research in other areas might not hurt every once in a while..._ the allure of the opportunities this equipment could give him was a more than a little enticing. He'd never had the glimmer for tech like this; the only reason he had it now was because the Vanguard would spare no expense if the life of a Guardian was at stake. There were so few Guardians these days. He could remember when all eight of the Towers were used. Between Six Fronts and Twilight Gap, only one or two should have been left empty.

 _But if we had left the moon alone..._ He'd had... associates that partook in that battle. A recruit to the Gensym Order had survived. She never spoke another word, to _anyone_ , ever again. Thousands had died up there, he could still remember combing through the list of the dead for names that he knew. It had been so long. He was glad he'd been needed by the Order at that time.

 _"Mir? Do you you copy?"_ a voice invaded his comm piece with a burst of static. Since his Ghost could no longer preform the function, he'd gotten a mobile receiver.

"Yes, yes what is it?" he sighed impatiently. He really would like to finish calibrating before the day was done.

 _"We're having trouble getting through to the Tower. Comms have been spotty all day, and cut off completely an hour ago. Any of that equipment you brought in able transmission-capable?"_ the man on the other end of the line asked.

"Yes. Have your repairmen actually tried to fix you comms system yet?" he asked with a roll of his eyes. _Idiots. My equipment is a band-aid; they need to_ fix _the problem!_ He would _not_ become a glorified communications officer!

 _"That's the problem; our system is brand new, we've combed it over twelve times today, and all the computers say we're broadcasting."_ Asher frowned. That meant either one of two things; a)these people were idiots and their system really was broken, or b) the problem wasn't the broadcaster... it was the receiver. _Wasn't there supposed to be a storm today?_

He immediately relaxed. Yes, that was what all the forecasts had said, and he had gotten the last flight out of the hangar schedule before all ships were grounded; the monsoon was supposed to be _that_ bad.

"There's an electrical storm forecasted for the city today; it's probably just the storm. Ignore it." he turned his receiver off, and strode for where he planned to set up his computers. _Here's to hoping they don't make a habit of whining to me every time their broadcast, or microwave, or heating blanket shorts out..._

His receiver beeped again as he climbed up the steep edge of a crater wedged between two vex pillars that seemed to be growing towards the Pyramidion. Frustrated, he flipped the switch.

"What?" he snapped. Static broken by incomprehensible yelling answered him, and at the same time, the air itself began to shake. He looked up... and nearly dropped the receiver. He suddenly had a feeling about what the broken orders coming in from the transmission where.

 _"Fall back."_

 _Cabal. Here. But how? What is that insignia? Why..._ his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden wave of dizziness. _I'm not supposed to feel like this for at least a year..._

He reached for a rock to try and steady himself, and at the same time, Caroline materialized, jerking in the air. He broken shell shimmered, and then dropped to the ground. _What..._ his hand was glowing. It felt like the very life was being sucked out of him. The glowing stopped, and he felt... empty. His legs buckled beneath him, and his head his something sharp as, on the other side of the system, the Red Legion began killing now-Lightless Guardians.

* * *

 _[Function: prepare]\_

 _[Reboot{element incomprehensible}]_

 _[Infinite Loop{des; Vault}status: Broken]\_

 _[Function: prepare for arrival]\_

 _[Error: data is para-causal risk to Collective[query~what is this~]}\_

 _[Error: data transfer beginning]\_

 _[Alert: Collective has been compromised]\_

 _She staggered, then stood, hair copper, armor old and tattered, eyes tired, cloak ragged and gray. She lifted her eyes in confusion at her new surrounding, and shouted{Dart? Dart? D'Artagnan!?}she saw the vex, and void formed in her left hand._

 _[Warning: factor{Light} terminated 3.8 designated hours ago. Threat possesses factor{Light}{Collective Query: why? How}]\_

 _[Collective Response: Eliminate.]\_

Asher gasped, taking several moments to orientate and realize he was _outside_ the Pyramidion, not _in_ it. _Where is she?_ His racing mind asked. That Huntress...

Panic overtook him when he remembered why he was on the ground, why his head hurt, and what had happened beforehand.

"Caroline!?" he called, grimacing as he pushed himself up, head ringing. He rubbed the tender spot he'd hit it at. That was... strange. he shouldn't have been out for more than a few moments, a Guardian's Light made it hard to keep them unconscious, even if their Ghost was incapacitated. He nearly had a heart attack when he sat up to meet his Ghost in the eye. He let out a breath of relief; she was still here, and not, as he had thought, dead.

"What happened, has the base tried to contact us again?" he didn't know why he'd expected an answer. Frustrated, had got to his feet, taking steadying breaths as nausea flashed through him. Great. The cabal were attacking, he couldn't be revived, his powers were weak, and now he was concussed! Not to mention whatever that glowing had done to him... one thing he had learned over the centuries was that extreme bio-luminescence in people was usually a bad thing.

He located his receiver and hailed every channel with no response. Throwing it at a rock in frustration, he went for the truck, climbing in. Sure, driving with a concussion wasn't the best idea, but neither was fighting a cabal invasion with only a pistol. He had to know what was happening at the outpost. The whole planet was eerily silent considering what had happened. Brakion-no, _the watch on his wrist_ , told him he'd only been out for three hours.

He sped up as fast as the vehicle would go, and made his way to where 'home' would be for a while, only to put on the breaks halfway through the Rupture, and rub his eyes because that cabal base hadn't been there three hours ago. Ships were coming and going from it. Smoke rose from it. He could hear the _noise_ all the way from here. And that was... roughly where the Vanguard outpost had been.

He swallowed, but continued, though more slowly. He was no Hunter; he wasn't Bear. He couldn't scout an entire enemy territory without being seen, but he could at least get a feeling for what was going on.

 _But that Huntress I saw in the Pyramidion... was that real?_ His dreams involving the vex minds of Io were always vague; he only had a distant feel for their purposes when he saw them. Sometimes, he saw things that had happened long ago, such as the night he'd arrived and dreapt of killing Guardians. Killing them permanently. He could still remember the Warlock; her faceplate had been smashed in, he could only see one of her eyes, but it had been wide with terror as he-

He shook his head. He didn't know if that Huntress was from the past, present, or future, but there was no denying; she was real. He'd felt it; her Light, as she pulled her Dusk Bow. Or... Brakion had felt it, rather.

At some point, some unfortunate Huntress had been trapped in the Pyramidion, same as him and his Fireteam. _I wonder if she eve made it out..._

His heart skipped a beat when he realized there was someone in the middle of the road. He jerked the truck to the side, hitting the breaks, heart pounding. The vehicle swerved, tipped, but didn't go on it's side. When it finally went still, he opened the door and rushed out. It was a fellow Guardian, laying on their side, their Ghost hovering over them.

"What happened?" he demanded, running to them. The Ghost didn't meet his gaze. The Guardian was a Hunter. He rolled her onto her side and removed her helmet, checking for a pulse. Her armor was scorched and bloodied, it looked like she'd been... bitten by something? Something with savage teeth, it looked like. "Why haven't you revived her?"

"She's gone." the Ghost told him mournfully. "They all are... I can't bring her back. The... the Light. All of it, everyone's... the Light is gone. The Light is gone... and the City had fallen."

* * *

 _And the turds have hit the fan! I've decided to put review replies at the bottom with the authors note, mostly because that's how most other people do it, and the way I've been doing it kind of looks weird. Hope you guys all had a great Christmas, and I hope you all have a happy new year!_

 _Furious Titaness: I've already started planning how their dynamic might work, and so far... well, you've seen Darkrose's personality; it's going to be hilarious._

 _JayfeattherisAwesome: *Gasp* SENPIA! I'm glad you like her! I like to think so! And yes, I am obsessed with sniffing down lore!_

 _JayfeatterisAwesome: Lol, I kind of figured since Asher is salty as heck, his Ghost would need to be sassy enough to keep him in check somehow._

 _KnightsKing: X[]._

 _SpecterXCove(both reviews): Glad I surpassed your expectations, and I hope this chapter satisfies!_

 _zWarlock: As you can see, I decided to go with 'they're supposedly dead'. I do have plans for them, though. Yeah, the vex can do some seriously scary stuff, and it leads me to wonder how the heck they could simulate the Vault of Glass attack if they can't simulate Guardians. I mean, shouldn't we be more concerned about that? That's kinda what triggered this fic, really; we were going to have a crud tone of new stuff to do with the vex, and I wanted to delve into it. I hope you enjoy it!^^ I'm glad you enjoyed Asher's prologue; he did strike me as a character who wants to keep to himself for a reason, and knowing he's been around for centuries, he's lived through some serious sh** like the Great Disaster and stuff like that. I'm sure most older Guardians do. I put a lot of thought going into this fic._

 _Whew, what an uptick in reviews! Sorry to reviewers who think my replies were too chatty, it's a bad habit! For anyone who is also interested in Mass Effect, I've posted a fic where I basically dump drabbles about the Normandy crew while I try to combat my writers block for my mainstream ME fic._

 _Happy New year, and look forwards to the next chapter!_

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	4. Just For One Day

_Heroes-Peter Gabriel feat.(original by David Bowie)_

 _"Though nothing, nothing can keep us together... we can beat them, forever and ever... we could be heroes, just for one day..."_

* * *

Allison gasped as Light flooded through her.

"Thank goodness!" D'Artagnan's form became clearer. "I was afraid for a few moments, there..."

"It'll take more than a nasty fall." she grunted, rolling onto her side. She winced as pain shot through her. _Afterwounds_. That was what it wall called when a chosen was injured so badly, some of the wound lingered after revival. Judging by the extent of her pain, she must have shattered every bone in her body when she hit the ground. She would heal fast, but she kept her movements slow just in case.

"Can you hail Kitty or Faust?" she asked, looking up, straining her ears. She thought she could hear Timur's screaming, but she also thought it might just be echoes of her memories before falling. She rubbed her right forearm, where that... shapeless thing had grabbed her. She grit her teeth as a burning sensation speared the area.

"No, I can't reach either of them. Saladin'll be getting Timur out of here, though. We should try to find a way back up." D'Art suggested. "But you need to rest first; I wasn't able to heal everything."

"I'll say." She muttered grimly, holding up her arm. She formed a flame of void in her other hand to provide light, and her Ghost floated closer to better examine the wound. Her armor had been, dare she say _melted_ , and her flesh was blackened. She grimaced. _This is definitely going to leave a mark..._

Which could not be said for most wounds a chosen received.

"That's dark." her companion said. "The sooner we get back and have that treated, the better."

"No kidding." she said dryly, eyes scanning the cliffs. She couldn't even see where she fell from, it could take days to climb that high, and she was no expert at rock climbing; that was Orwing's special obsession, not hers.

The screech of a vex somewhere in the distance. She and D'Art looked into the mist, and she placed one hand on her knife, which was mercifully intact. She put out the void flame, and drew her weapon.

"I think hiding may soon take a priority over escaping." she told her Ghost. He made a sort of nodding motion, then vanished. Soon, so did she.

* * *

Allison whet her best knife absentmindedly. She did not know what day it was. She didn't know how long she had been here, or how the vex had even managed it.

Some days after she fell, she had found herself captured, or so she thought. She had gotten away, or so she thought. But it was like she was trapped in a room.

"I'm working on it! I'll have it all figured out soon!" D'Art assured her. He was ten feet away from her. Physically, there was nothing blocking him from coming to her. But she couldn't reach him, and he couldn't reach her, not without being trapped as well. At least, that was how he had described it.

That room she was trapped in, was actually a time loop. She'd been told she sat here time and time again, always for fifteen minutes, always sharpening her knife, thinking. About what, he hadn't said. She assumed 'about Timur', because that was who she was thinking about right now. Specifically, when he'd been lost. Or rather close to it, after he was first revived. The newly-reborn Warlock had seemed to be stuck in a loop himself.

At least in that village, he'd seemed to find himself eventually...

 _Timur had long stopped shivering, though his face was still buried in her shoulder, and his arms were still wrapped tight around her. Hypothermia, perhaps. As usual, the cold didn't bother her. She flexed her shoulders as they approached the village, and he gave a frightened start, hands leaving her waist and perhaps flying to his chest. Which they did, she could feel._

 _"It's just a phantom pain." she told him matter-of-factly. "The first time's always the roughest. You'll get used to it."_

 _Another shudder. He would have to get used to the concept of regular death; it was already easy to get killed out here, and avoiding deathtraps tended to become harder once you were impervious to death. Timur resumed his deathgrip on her, and she scanned the village with hawk-like eyes, searching for a place to stay the night._

 _There was a monastery. Her mouth quirked upwards. A Catholic monastery. Those were hard to come by, even if more and more people turned to the religion as the days grew darker. Her right hand automatically moved towards the pack on her belt; the only thing of note she'd been revived with was a rosary. She always wondered if she still counted as a person, or if her soul had long gone and she was just a husk. Either way, whomever she'd been in the past, her faith had meant something to her. It wasn't the worst connection she could have to her past._

 _With any luck, the nuns and/or monks within the stone building would have room for two more; she had no doubt they were the only travelers to have to take up bed there._

 _"How do you?" Timur asked as she pulled the horse to a stop. She twisted to look him in the eyes, though it was hard to in the dark. His face was covered, matted in mud, and his eyes were dark, both because of the lighting and because of the pain, the anxiety, the terror and exhaustion in their depths. He'd set out to help Ghosts; not become a Chosen himself._

 _"You soldier on." The look didn't fade. He would be an empty man for the next few days, living mechanically at her direction. But in the end... he would do just that._

"Soldier on." she murmured to herself. It was what she'd told the man that would become her husband, all those decades ago, and it was what he would tell her to do now. So she would. She would soldier on.

"I know." D'Art replied, even though she hadn't been talking to him. The scream of what had to be a massive vex startled her out of her reverie. She stashed her whetting block quickly, and sheathed her knife.

"Run, Allison!" D'Art insisted. So she ran. She ran and-

* * *

Allison whet her best knife absentmindedly. She did not know what day it was. She didn't know how long she had been here, or how the vex had even managed it.

Some days after she fell, she had found herself captured, or so she thought. She had gotten away, or so she thought. But it was like she was trapped in a room.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry it's taking so long." D'Art assured her, though he sounded unsure himself. He was ten feet away from her. Physically, there was nothing blocking him from coming to her. But she couldn't reach him, and he couldn't reach her, not without being trapped as well. At least, that was how he had described it.

That room she was trapped in, was actually a time loop. She'd been told she sat here time and time again, always for fifteen minutes, always sharpening her knife, thinking. About what, he hadn't said. She assumed 'about Timur', because that was who she was thinking about right now. Specifically, when he'd been lost. Or rather close to it, after he was first revived. The newly-reborn Warlock had seemed to be stuck in a loop himself.

At least in that village, he'd seemed to find himself eventually...

 _Timur had long stopped shivering, though his face was still buried in her shoulder, and his arms were still wrapped tight around her. Hypothermia, perhaps. As usual, the cold didn't bother her. She flexed her shoulders as they approached the village, and he gave a frightened start, hands leaving her waist and perhaps flying to his chest. Which they did, she could feel._

 _"It's just a phantom pain." she told him matter-of-factly. "The first time's always the roughest. You'll get used to it."_

 _Another shudder. He would have to get used to the concept of regular death; it was already easy to get killed out here, and avoiding deathtraps tended to become harder once you were impervious to death. Timur resumed his deathgrip on her, and she scanned the village with hawk-like eyes, searching for a place to stay the night._

 _There was a monastery. Her mouth quirked upwards. A Catholic monastery. Those were hard to come by, even if more and more people turned to the religion as the days grew darker. Her right hand automatically moved towards the pack on her belt; the only thing of note she'd been revived with was a rosary. She always wondered if she still counted as a person, or if her soul had long gone and she was just a husk. Either way, whomever she'd been in the past, her faith had meant something to her. It wasn't the worst connection she could have to her past._

 _With any luck, the nuns and/or monks within the stone building would have room for two more; she had no doubt they were the only travelers to have to take up bed there._

 _"How do you?" Timur asked as she pulled the horse to a stop. She twisted to look him in the eyes, though it was hard to in the dark. His face was covered, matted in mud, and his eyes were dark, both because of the lighting and because of the pain, the anxiety, the terror and exhaustion in their depths. He'd set out to help Ghosts; not become a Chosen himself._

 _"You soldier on." The look didn't fade. He would be an empty man for the next few days, living mechanically at her direction. But in the end... he would do just that._

"Soldier on." she murmured to herself. It was what she'd told the man that would become her husband, all those decades ago, and it was what he would tell her to do now. So she would. She would soldier on.

"I know." D'Art replied with a heaved sigh, even though she hadn't been talking to him. The scream of what had to be a massive vex startled her out of her reverie. She stashed her whetting block quickly, and sheathed her knife.

"Go, Allison! I'll see you in the next loop!" D'Art insisted. So she ran. She ran and-

* * *

Allison whet her best knife absentmindedly. She did not know what day it was. She didn't know how long she had been here, or how the vex had even managed it.

Some days after she fell, she had found herself captured, or so she thought. She had gotten away, or so she thought. But it was like she was trapped in a room.

"I'm doing my best, but... oh, Allison, I'm so sorry this is happening..." D'Artagnan sounded completely dejected. He was ten feet away from her. Physically, there was nothing blocking him from coming to her. But she couldn't reach him, and he couldn't reach her, not without being trapped as well. At least, that was how he had described it. Oh, she wished she could reach him! He sounded like he could use the comfort, to be certain.

That room she was trapped in, was actually a time loop. She'd been told she sat here time and time again, always for fifteen minutes, always sharpening her knife, thinking. About what, he hadn't said. She assumed 'about Timur', because that was who she was thinking about right now. Specifically, when he'd been lost. Or rather close to it, after he was first revived. The newly-reborn Warlock had seemed to be stuck in a loop himself.

At least in that village, he'd seemed to find himself eventually...

 _Timur had long stopped shivering, though his face was still buried in her shoulder, and his arms were still wrapped tight around her. Hypothermia, perhaps. As usual, the cold didn't bother her. She flexed her shoulders as they approached the village, and he gave a frightened start, hands leaving her waist and perhaps flying to his chest. Which they did, she could feel._

 _"It's just a phantom pain." she told him matter-of-factly. "The first time's always the roughest. You'll get used to it."_

 _Another shudder. He would have to get used to the concept of regular death; it was already easy to get killed out here, and avoiding deathtraps tended to become harder once you were impervious to death. Timur resumed his deathgrip on her, and she scanned the village with hawk-like eyes, searching for a place to stay the night._

 _There was a monastery. Her mouth quirked upwards. A Catholic monastery. Those were hard to come by, even if more and more people turned to the religion as the days grew darker. Her right hand automatically moved towards the pack on her belt; the only thing of note she'd been revived with was a rosary. She always wondered if she still counted as a person, or if her soul had long gone and she was just a husk. Either way, whomever she'd been in the past, her faith had meant something to her. It wasn't the worst connection she could have to her past._

 _With any luck, the nuns and/or monks within the stone building would have room for two more; she had no doubt they were the only travelers to have to take up bed there._

 _"How do you?" Timur asked as she pulled the horse to a stop. She twisted to look him in the eyes, though it was hard to in the dark. His face was covered, matted in mud, and his eyes were dark, both because of the lighting and because of the pain, the anxiety, the terror and exhaustion in their depths. He'd set out to help Ghosts; not become a Chosen himself._

 _"You soldier on." The look didn't fade. He would be an empty man for the next few days, living mechanically at her direction. But in the end... he would do just that._

"Soldier on." she murmured to herself. It was what she'd told the man that would become her husband, all those decades ago, and it was what he would tell her to do now. So she would. She would soldier on.

"I wish you would stop saying that." D'Art replied, sounding irritated, shell twisting, even though she hadn't been talking to him. The scream of what had to be a massive vex startled her out of her reverie. She stashed her whetting block quickly, and sheathed her knife.

"Run!" D'Art insisted. So she ran. She ran and-

* * *

Allison whet her best knife absentmindedly. She did not know what day it was. She didn't know how long she had been here, or how the vex had even managed it.

Some days after she fell, she had found herself captured, or so she thought. She had gotten away, or so she thought. But it was like she was trapped in a room.

D'Artagnan floated in silence somewhere beyond, having insisted that they maintain at least a ten foot distance from each other in order to prevent him from falling into the loop as well. Upon his return, he'd flashed sever pieces of vex junk into existence, adding to a growing collection hidden by some nearby boulders.

That room she was trapped in, was actually a time loop. She'd been told she sat here time and time again, always for fifteen minutes, always sharpening her knife, thinking. About what, he hadn't said. She assumed 'about Timur', because that was who she was thinking about right now. Specifically, when he'd been lost. Or rather close to it, after he was first revived. The newly-reborn Warlock had seemed to be stuck in a loop himself.

At least in that village, he'd seemed to find himself eventually...

 _Timur had long stopped shivering, though his face was still buried in her shoulder, and his arms were still wrapped tight around her. Hypothermia, perhaps. As usual, the cold didn't bother her. She flexed her shoulders as they approached the village, and he gave a frightened start, hands leaving her waist and perhaps flying to his chest. Which they did, she could feel._

 _"It's just a phantom pain." she told him matter-of-factly. "The first time's always the roughest. You'll get used to it."_

 _Another shudder. He would have to get used to the concept of regular death; it was already easy to get killed out here, and avoiding deathtraps tended to become harder once you were impervious to death. Timur resumed his deathgrip on her, and she scanned the village with hawk-like eyes, searching for a place to stay the night._

 _There was a monastery. Her mouth quirked upwards. A Catholic monastery. Those were hard to come by, even if more and more people turned to the religion as the days grew darker. Her right hand automatically moved towards the pack on her belt; the only thing of note she'd been revived with was a rosary. She always wondered if she still counted as a person, or if her soul had long gone and she was just a husk. Either way, whomever she'd been in the past, her faith had meant something to her. It wasn't the worst connection she could have to her past._

 _With any luck, the nuns and/or monks within the stone building would have room for two more; she had no doubt they were the only travelers to have to take up bed there._

 _"How do you?" Timur asked as she pulled the horse to a stop. She twisted to look him in the eyes, though it was hard to in the dark. His face was covered, matted in mud, and his eyes were dark, both because of the lighting and because of the pain, the anxiety, the terror and exhaustion in their depths. He'd set out to help Ghosts; not become a Chosen himself._

 _"You soldier on." The look didn't fade. He would be an empty man for the next few days, living mechanically at her direction. But in the end... he would do just that._

"Soldier on." she murmured to herself. It was what she'd told the man that would become her husband, all those decades ago, and it was what he would tell her to do now. So she would. She would soldier on.

"SHUT UP!" D'Artagnan practically screamed, even though she hadn't been talking to him. She looked up at him with surprise as he continued on, practically sobbing. "Just SHUT UP! Stop SAYING THAT!"

The scream of what had to be a massive vex startled her out of her reverie. She stashed her whetting block quickly, and sheathed her knife.

"Just ignore that." D'Art said without emotion, turning back to the piece of vex tech he'd been scanning. So she sighed, wishing he would talk to her more, crossing her arms and leaning back against the rock. If it was safe as he said, she might as well catch a nap-

* * *

"Fel, do you have any rope?" the Titan in great, strange armor from the top of the cliff asked one of his companions. Allison had run into them by shear chance while looking for D'Artagnan, whom she'd lost about three hours ago after fleeing from a battle from a strange vex.

"We don't have time for this." another voice from above insisted in frustration. "This could be a vex trick!"

"Alder, we can't just leave her." the Titan shot back. "And if she's a vex trick, it's the most convincing one I've ever seen."

"Vex can't simulate Guardians." another voice pointed out. _That_ peaked Allison's interest. _Guardians? What does that mean?_

"I assure you, I'm no vex trick. I've been stuck down here for days." she told them. The six-man team of chosen, who didn't appear to be aligned with the Iron Lords, had completely caught her by surprise. Even more surprising? How well-armed they seemed to be. The Iron Lords were lucky to have a few auto rifles, and a couple of old revolvers laying around. These Chosen? They were all armed to the teeth with weaponry of all kinds, some of which she didn't recognize. Their armor was shining, pristine, and they were well-covered in it.

And it didn't look like old metal, either. It looked like, dare she say, plasteel.

They were all gathered on a cliff that was several several meters up, and too steep for her to climb, and too high for any of the other chosen to jump back up, even Light-assisted, while carrying cargo.

"We can't afford to be weighed down!" another Titan joined his fellow at the edge of the cliff. "Atheon will die today. How well can you fight after days with no food or water, without your Ghost?"

"Well enough to kill you." she replied dryly. "Or several hundred vex. I'll kill a thousand if I have to. I promise, I won't endanger any kind of mission you're on. In fact, I may very well benefit it."

"And how might you do that?" he challenged. She lifted her hand, letting void curl around it.

"I have... ways." she said, smiling as he eyed the void, looking surprised.

"A Nightstalker." he nodded. _Hmm? Has Timur's name for these powers spread that quickly?_ True, he'd coined that term decades ago while she was training Perun, but she hadn't expected other Chosen to actually _use_ it for at least another century...

"Fel, get some rope." the Titan with the attitude ordered, before looking back down on her. "And you- what's your name, and how did you get in here by yourself?"

"I'm-"

* * *

"Allison, this way!" She jumped, pulling her bow in the direction of D'Art's voice before letting it fade, feeling relief wash over her.

"D'Art..." she strode towards him.

"No! Don't come any closer, stay at least ten feet away from me." her Ghost's voice was strained, erratic. His shell was dirty, damaged, weathered like he was decades, nay, centuries older. "And follow me."

"D'Artagnan, what's going on?" she ordered. "What happened to you, I've been worried sick!"

"It's a time loop." Her Ghost blurted out. She swore, there was an insane laugh somewhere in his voice, like someone he'd spent too long in solitary confinement. "Don't ask me how, that 'Atheon' vex did it while were were fighting it. But I found a way out. Keep up, there's not much time. You spent too long dawdling the last five loops, and you missed it. Then the other thing happened."

"D'Art, what are you talking about? What other thing?" she pressed, following her twitchy Ghost through the maze of rocks. "How long have you been here? How long has this been happening?"

"The Light is gone. Something happened. Something bad. I was out for hours." he said, stopping to hover over a large boulder, agonizingly out of her reach. "I think it's been a few centuries. But I'm not sure; I lost count sometime after two hundred."

"Two hundred..." she felt herself pale, eyes fixed on her Ghost. "D'Art..."

"I'm fine, really. I know so much about the vex now, Allison! I've even tricked them into thinking I'm one of them!" he sounded... excited. And she felt like she might be sick. "Talking to Praedyth was nice, while he lasted. Oh, and there's another Ghost in the network, too! Happened a few years ago, gave itself a username- funny one, too. 'You'reWelcome2'. Hehe. Come on!"

"D'Artagnan, if the Light is gone, why can I still..." she looked down at her fist, letting void unfurl between her fingers.

"Because, you were separate. You're in a loop. Nothing from the outside of it can affect you. Picture it as a room; the only way in is to open the door. A door locked from the outside. You can't get out. But if you have the key, you can open the door. I found a key; I can _let you out_." His voice turned to an excited whisper before he zipped over to a vex gate. "I just need you to take those glorious thumbs of yours, and do everything I tell you with this... no, _this_ stuff!"

With a pulse, piles of vex parts and various junk clattered to the ground. She took it all in.

"Did you..." she pointed at a vex head. There were other body parts mixed in as well. And vex weren't clumsy enough to drop dead on their own accord. "Did you... kill vex?"

"One or two." there undeniable pride in his voice. "Once I figured out how. Buuuuut, then this big grumpy team of Chosen burst in, and then more came, more often! I swear, there's two wondering somewhere around her right now! Came out of this gate right here, that's how I found it. But anyway, I took parts from the bodies they left behind while they did their thing. Never even saw me!"

"You didn't think to ask for _help_!?" She yelled. She swore, he flinched right into the ground, or deeper.

"Hey, _I've_ spent centuries trying to save you! And they _did_ try to help! _Every single person that's been in here has tried to help_!" he was sobbing frantically now. "But the loop just reset! The Chosen who came through here got caught in it! I can't even find them! I tried to help! For the first century, I tried to help. But you. Wouldn't. Remember. And then you'd be gone. Just... just do what I say, Allison. _Please_. I want to go, I want to go home."

So she did as he said. And by the end of it, he activated the gate.

"You'll probably end up where those Chosen came from. But it will break the loop. I've been directing the local vex mind on the other side to prepare for your arrival; it'll think you're one of it, but not for long." he told her.

"What about the other Chosen?" she couldn't leave someone in the same hell-hole she'd been trapped in for days- _no, centuries, D'Art said centuries_.

"They're dead. Haven't seen em' since they first interacted with you. Either they're spending their loop hiding, or they're dead. Probably dead. Yup, definitely dead; just did a local scan. So yes, They're dead. VERY DEAD!" he ranted.

"Okay." she sighed. She wanted to go home, too. But... centuries? For the first time, she considered what that might mean. That it might mean Timur had moved on, and the thought made her heart break. Why would he still be waiting for a woman he'd thought dead for centuries? _He wouldn't. Nobody would._ She reached down her armor, and pulled out the ring she wore dangling form her neck. It wouldn't fit on her finger when she was wearing armor. She rubbed it, the lump in her throat growing.

"D'Art..." she rasped.

"GO!" he shouted suddenly, focused on something behind her. She whirled, and saw vex. "GO NOW! GET OUT, ALLY! RUN!"

So she ran. She ran and-

The world pulled at her, a sudden feeling like nothing she'd ever felt before. It was like an extreme variation of the feeling one got while on an elevator(she'd only been on one once, though, so she couldn't say it was true for all elevators), and then the landscape changed in an instance.

"D'Art!" she called, turning and twisting, seeking him out. "D'Art? D'Artagnan!?"

A glowing red eye caught her gaze... and she pulled her bow as a massive vex loomed over her.

* * *

 _Okay, so, write heartbreaking chapter while listening to 'Song of Stars': check. Destabilize D'Artagnan: Checkaroo. Converg evens with the end of last chapter so Asher's dream makes a little more sense: Check as well._

 _Now, if you excuse me... I need to cry a little. Because this song... is just too sad... and so is this chapter! They seem to fit perfectly!_

 _jsm1978: Thanks! Actually, my headcanon is that lost memories have more to do with time of death than the actually act of becoming a Guardian. Timur was only dead for a few moments, so there wasn't a whole lot of memory deterioration. Ah, thanks for pointing those out. Um, what chapter was the vex thing in? And where? There are so many feaking line about the vex...(proceeds to spell 'freaking' wrong in a reply to someone pointing out a typo. Bravo, Sarcasm, Bravo.)_

 _Jayfeattheris Awesome: He'd as cranky as an onion; Asher deserves layers. And I'm glad you like Clary! She's kind of the 'sweet' member of the team who can get away with pretty much anything. Including giving Asher Mir a nickname._

 _alienraptor: The next chapter, has arrived.*bows*_

 _SpecterXCove: Good review.(I can see we're playing the 'short conversation game' lol)_

 _Had writers block on this one for a while. The, I found 'Song of Stars in the Final Fantasy 15 soundtrack, and it was just... perfect for this chapter. I always like to write chapters to music that fits the mood(kind of why I put song titles at the top of each one: I listened to 'heroes' a while during this one, too), and after my tenth loop of 'Heroes', I just kind of puttered out. I saw the trailer for 'The Looming Tower', heard the music in that, got inspired for the next Asher chapter, wrote half of that, and then came back to this._

 _So at least I have a bunch of next chapter done. I might be shorter than the others I've written so far; just as a warning._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	5. Within

_"Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms end, my only rival is within..."_

 _Ruelle- Rival_

* * *

 **1 Day After The Attack...**

 _[Target: {Light} Eliminate]_

 _{Her cloak billowed like trees in the wind as she wove and dodged, her hair loose and flowing like a copper river as she fought. He envied her ease, her ability to move, all the different ways she could twist and grip with her right hand. If he could ever be so dexterous again-}_

 _{she rolled, pulled her bow, and sent several arrows to fly right into his face}_

Asher jerked awake with a scream, phantom pain stabbing through his neck. His good hand dropped a Ghost, and flew to his throat, to find there were no spikes of flesh-eating void sticking out of his skin. He let out a heavy breath of relief, then remembered the Ghost. It lay on his chest, lifeless, and for a few moments, he was confused.

Then, he remembered the Hunter. He shut his eyes. Ghosts usually died not long after their Guardians. He'd kept her close last night, and the two of them had had a long, long conversation about their current situation before he had decided to rest(though sparingly, he was still concussed). _Must have died in the night._

Asher stood, grimacing as sore muscles were sent into action once more. He glared at a rock that had dug into his back while he slept(or so it felt like, his spine felt bruised), and looked around for Caroline, to find her circling a rib-like spike of derelict vex tech. He stretched, and took the dead Ghost carefully in his good hand.

"Caroline." he ordered firmly. His Ghost turned sharply to stare at him, and then floated over to fall in over his right shoulder. He supposed one good thing about being suffused in vex tech was that she was attracted to it like a moth to a flame. That made it easier for him to keep her close. He strode cautiously to the mouth of the cave, a centuries-lost voice echoing in his head.

 _"Never just charge out of a cave like you own the planet- you check, every time. The area, the direction of the wind, heck, even the smell of the place. The smell'n part's important, 'cuz if there's Fallen around, you'll_ definitely _smell them."_

As it stood, Cabal also carried a horrible aroma with them as well. He scanned the area with icy glowing eyes, and, certain he was upwind of most things, gave the air en experimental sniff. _Industrial equipment, Cabal, certainly._ With just a hint of... rock dust? The new base was at least a mile or two away, if he could smell their work from here, they were working _fast_. He could also hear it; it was _loud_.

Certain there was no immediate danger nearby, he strode out of the cave, and, finding the easy footholds he'd discovered yesterday, pulled himself up onto the shelf of rock above his cave.

He was no stranger to being called heartless... but even he hadn't had the heart to leave the dead Huntress laying on the road. If it had happened in a forest, he would have left her; Hunters lived, fought, and died in the wild, and their general belief was that, should they ever die, their corpses should give back to the wild in repayment. But as it stood, she had not died in a forest; she'd been left to rot on a dirt road, and perhaps later she would be eaten in gruesome fashion by the beasts that had bitten her.

Even he couldn't leave another Guardian to suffer that indignity. He looked down at the disturbed earth(and he used the term loosely), and the small boulder he'd moved into place as a makeshift headstone. One good thing about his bad arm; it was useful for digging graves in hard rock like this. He knelt down in front of the headstone, taking the Hunter's knife from his belt, and placing both it and her Ghost down gently.

"Map wherever your heart wished to wander." he murmured. It was an old Hunter saying, back from the way-old days of the Dark Age, when their allegiance was to themselves and not the City. Culturally, there were more traditions among Hunters than there were among Warlocks, or Titans, and he suspected this to be the reason. He was no Hunter, but he valued respect towards them when it was due.

 _"Never stay in one place too long when you're in enemy territory, kid. And never light fires. If you freeze to death, well, that's what your Ghost is for. Don't look at me like that!"_

Asher stood and looked towards the Pyramidion. He couldn't just leave his equipment... it was so expensive...

 _"If you have to choose between keeping the hot meat you just got for yourself, and keeping your Ghost from dying, choose the freaking latter. I won't always be around to save you. And neither will your team, if you don't get that attitude of yours in check."_

Falling back on knowledge and training he hadn't had to use in centuries, Asher Mir abandoned the most expensive scientific instruments glimmer could buy.

* * *

There was a reason he respected Hunters-and a reason he hated Titans. He would always feel most comfortable when surrounded by other Warlocks, but if he had to hazard a guess at why he'd only ever gotten along with Hunters as friends(Eris, Bear, Clary), it was because his earliest days as a Guardian had been spent under the tutelage of a cantankerous older Huntress he'd only ever known as 'Skeets'. In those days, when the end of the Dark Age was beginning to slowly creep upon Humanity, and Warlords were still common enough to be a danger(despite the Iron Lords efforts), it was every man for himself.

And a confused corpse with powers he barely understood was easy pickings if found by the wrong people. And he'd been found by an outlaw. It was funny- she'd been dead almost as long as he'd been alive, and still she was helping him. His first source of knowledge, as a Warlock, had been a metaphorical book titled 'how not to die a permanent death in various horrific manners'. His early days had been spent learning pure survival, just like any other Guardian his age or near so.

For now, he was driving randomly across the Mesa, backtracking and taking different roads every time. He'd keep going until the damn truck was nearly out of gas, and then he'd park it in the most secluded place he could find, and use it as shelter. He'd packed his sidearm with him when he first set out the morning of the attack, but only two extra clips of ammo for it. He'd brought much more ammo for his Low-Grade Humility(he'd hated it when Clary started calling it that, but the name had stuck despite his efforts). He kept it with him only out of habit, and because it was the only one of his favorite weapons that had survived the Pyramidion.

At least, unlike when he was a new blood, he _had_ guns and knew how to fire them. Precisely.

 _"What are you doing?"_ _he whirled around at the sound of a feminine voice. Aged, but feminine none the less... and she was languishing in a_ tree _, of all the things!_

 _"What's it to_ you _?" his Ghost challenged. He'd been racking his brains to think of a name for her over the past few days..._

 _"Well, you're a strange chosen, who's neglected to take the road at all." the older woman shrugged. "If I were a lesser woman, I'd kill you both and save the local Fallen the trouble and ammo."_

 _"What's that suppoed to mean?" he challenged, leering at her. He could handle himself! He had powers(okay fine, he hadn't figured out how to use them yet), and he could die as much as he wanted(he shuddered inwardly); he was going to live forever, what was there to be afraid of from a bunch of Fallen, or whatever she was talking about?_

 _"You'll be dead permanently by sundown." she told him flatly. "I've seen you walking around in circles for the last three days, and the House of Devils is getting finicky since the Iron Lords booted them out of their northern territories."_

 _"If you're so smart,_ where do I go _?" he snorted._ This is ridiculous! Who does she think she is?

 _"High ground. Climb one of these here trees, figure out where you are. Pick a river, if you see one, cuz you look like you could use some water-don't forget to boil it first- and where there's water, there'll be food." she twirled a knife in her hand casually as she spoke. "That should keep you alive for a while, cinders."_

 _"Pardon?" he scowled at her. What did she just call him?_

 _"Haven't seen your reflection yet, have ya?" she asked. "Your hair, kinda reminds me of cinders. Got a name yet?"_

 _"T-that's none of your business!" he sputtered. He didn't have a name yet. His Ghost had said he might remember his given name with time. For the time being, she'd been calling him 'Mir': the word had been engraved on a silver coin near his corpse, and he could only assume it had been his family name. Frustratingly, his given name had been melted off along with half the coin._

 _"Whatever you say, kid. Don't forget about that tree."_

He would have to find high ground soon. He had a map of the area, but that was pre-Cabal invasion. At the very least, he needed to get a feel for where their outposts and strong points were, so he could avoid them.

And where they were keeping their ships, and/or where they were keeping the supplies they'd taken from the Vanguard outpost. Io didn't support life... at least, not anymore. The Traveler had never finished terraforming it, so his chances of survival lowered with each ration pack he consumed. He'd been planing to make a camp near his work station, so he'd brought twenty packs, each of which had enough nutrients to sustain the average person for up to three days. Without his Light to sustain him, that meant he had roughly two months before he started to starve to death, and that was only if he could find a way to get fresh water on a planet that had none at all.

And he had very _specific_ water needs, thanks to the vex tech floating around in his body. _Water and salt._ He was craving salt again. That happened a lot. Originally, his coma had been the result of severe and sudden hyponatremia-which made sense, considering the saline properties of the radiolaria Vex tech ran off off. Ever since then, he'd been experiencing a roller coaster of salt and water imbalances.

All in all, his future didn't look bright so far. Even Cabal needed water... but stealing it from them? How did one manage that without being completely insane? Well, insane, or a Hunter, which in some cases meant insanity came along as a bonus.

Pain shot through his shoulder, and he gasped, hitting the breaks when the pain only got more intense, like someone was trying to rip the vex arm off of him. Breathing through clenched teeth, he gripped his shoulder with his good hand. _What are the vex doing?_ He wondered. Could that be why he was hurting? He shut his eyes, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel with a groan as the wrenching feeling intensified.

 _[Directive: Stop Target{Light}]_

 _{The entrance to the Pyramidion was shut, tightly. It had to remain that way to keep her trapped}_

The information passed through his brain like an electric jolt, and he jumped. _I shouldn't be able to hear them when I'm awake!_

"What is this?" he whispered in terror to nobody in particular. He glanced at Caroline, as the pain in his shoulder faded to a dull ache, and the pieces from his... vision, for lack of a better term, added up with his recent dreams. There hadn't been a Hunter trapped in the Pyramidion, past tense. There was one trapped in the Pyramidion _right now_...

And the vex were trying to stop her from escaping.

* * *

Asher spent the better part of the rest of the day in a moral dilemma. On one hand, there was a Guardian trapped in the Pyramidion, perhaps about to undergo the same agony he'd been put through. On the other hand... there was a Guardian trapped in the _Pyramidion_. The very thought of walking up to the entrance made his chest tighten and his good hand shake.

It wasn't like he had a fireteam to back him up anymore- he didn't even have the Vanguard to back him up anymore! Sure, he was a good shot, downright surgical, and he'd always been good at keeping a fair distance between himself and the enemy when the opportunity presented itself, but there was no way he could stage a rescue attempt against the _Pyramidion_...

Just overlooking the entrance to the place made him feel a bit woozy.

 _"Are you sure this is a good idea?"_

 _No._ _For once, I'm not sure at all._ He rubbed the scrap of Bear's cloak he kept with him. He could vaguely recall clutching the Hunter like a lifeline during the blurred rush to escape the vex stronghold, and his only guess was that he'd torn this piece off when the Exo tried to drop him. It stood as a testament to the terror of the moment; Hunter cloaks were made for durability above all else.

Now, this tiny scrap was all he had left of either of them, all because he'd chosen to enter the Pyramidion. He bit his lip. He was laying on his stomach, with his Low-Grade Humility pointed at the eye of the very Vex Mind he'd seen through earlier. At least like this, he didn't have too much trouble handling the weapon... if he decided to go through with this insane rescue plan.

Asher hated 'heroes'. Especially among Guardians. Heroism was waste of time; if you had the ability to die as many times as you wanted and wind up without a scratch, why not devote that time to discovering the mysteries of the universe which had previously been closed? Only this once would he make an exception. He seemed to be making a lot of exceptions lately.

 _Perhaps this is simply what the end of the world does to you..._

It had certainly forced him to change his perspective on life in the Jovians. His priorities had been forced from 'science' to 'survival' like it was the Dark Age all over again. Io, which he'd once seen as a peaceful place in which to work in quiet, was now a waterless, lifeless, foodless deathtrap in which he knew he wouldn't survive for long, especially without his Light.

But this Hunter- this Nightstalker-for whatever reason, still had her powers. Perhaps that was part of why he was doing this; by himself, he could never hope to survive... but a Nightstalker? If she was as good as Bear, she could sneak in the Cabal base and steal supplies without them even noticing! Supplies he could use to not only survive, but shield himself from being noticed by the Cabal presence.

He could continue his research if he had someone to do the dirty work for him.

 _"Peachy. Just... peachy, Ash. Downright peachy."_

He exhaled. He didn't need phantoms judging him for anti-heroism. He took a deep breath, and on the exhale, squeezed the trigger, twice. He felt a needle of pain in his shoulder as the Mind went down. _Strange. I can feel when an important piece of the Collective is removed..._ His curse certainly worked in mysterious ways. Ways that could be problematic under certain circumstances.

He put the rest of the minor vex units in his sights, and brought them down in quick succession. _At least my aim hasn't deteriorated._ Now came the part he was dreading; finding a way to open the gate.

He picked his way down carefully, wary of drops that, a year ago would have been no problem, but now posed as hazards to a twisted ankle or worse. His heart was pounding, and not just because of the daunting drops that were mocking him.

 _"Are you sure this is a good idea?"_

 _"So, what exactly are we blowing up, poking, or electrocuting this time?"_

The plates were connected to the node that opened the door. He just had to activate them without alerting the vex. He tried to swallow the sense of terror that was creeping up on him. There had to be a way to open the door without alerting the vex...

He glanced down at his arm. Did he necessarily need to be _all_ the way in the plate's ring in order to activate it? Cautiously, he crouched next to the plate, and stuck his vex arm out, touching the ground beyond the ring. Red conflux energy began to rise up from the ring. _It think's I'm a vex!_ He filed the trick away in case he ever needed to use vex tech discreetly. He tried to ignore the thought in the back of his head that this ring though he was a _vex_ -one of the _enemy_.

He was not vex. He was Awoken.

 _"We're going nowhere fast; we need to back off!"_

He made his way to the other plate, and repeated the process. He tugged at the collar of his robes. He was having trouble breathing. Was Io always this hot? The plate pinged, and the floating node sent energy streaming into the entrance of the Pyramidion as it registered the request for entrance.

 _"Asher, you're going to get yourself killed!"_

The gate folded open, sounding like thunder.

 _"Asher, on your six!"_

He couldn't breath. He... he had to run! He had to get out of here!

 _"You owe us drinks after this."_

Terror spiking through him like a flaming knife, he ran for the walls. He suppressed a scream when he realized the only way out was by jumping at a hight he could no longer achieve without his powers. His heart pounded against his ribs like a striker that was trying to knock down a wall-and succeeding at doing so. He dashed frantically from one corner of the pit to the other, seeking some way out and finding none. He was trapped down here, next to the entrance of the Pyramidion, where the vex could find him, and he thought he might die because there wasn't enough _air_ on this wretched planet!

So Asher freaking Mir, Gensym Scribe and best Warlock of all times, crawled under an overhang, pressing himself against the back wall, and pulled his knees to his chest as he tried to fight his panic attack.

 _He'd been in some pretty desperate situations before, but he had never lost his composure. He prided himself on never panicking, no matter how badly an experiment might be going._

 _Until now. This experiment had gone worse than any other before it._

 _Asher kicked and screamed, thrashing and clawing at the chitin-covered floor as he tried to escape the grip of the Blight rift. An entrance to the realm of the Taken. A place he had no desire to be, and a place he'd just wanted to send a probe into. Get few readings, valuable data for both the Gensym Scribes, and for Eris._

 _But he could hear Oryx laughing at him, or at least he thought he could. He could feel his Light being sucked out of him, and by Newton's Laws, it_ hurt _! It felt like every nerve in his body had been doused with sulfuric acid, and the places where Bear was grabbing on to hurt even more as the Hunter tried to pull him free of the singularity's literal grip(he could feel the tendrils of Darkness sucking at his legs, groping up his torso, trying to curl themselves around his shoulders)._

 _"Asher, stop fighting me!" the Exo grunted. The cloaked Guardian was kicking at the ground as he tried to pull the Warlock free. "Any day now, Caroline!"_

 _"I'm trying!" he could barely hear his Ghost's panicked voice from where they had set up their equipment._

 _"I'm here!" he barely noticed Clary dashing up to them. He felt so drained, so tired all of the sudden... maybe it would be better just let go and let the inevitable happen..._

 _"Destroy the damn thing!" All that came next was lightning, chaos, and a releasing feeling where the tendrils had been digging in. It took Asher a few moments to realize he was free. But why, why couldn't he breath, his heart was still pounding, he tried to reach for his Light but it was little more than just a flicker._

 _"Asher? Asher, calm down. " Caroline hovered in front of him, Clary was soon crouched nearby with one hand on his shoulder. "Take deep breaths..."  
_

He didn't want to see their bodies.

He broke.

He didn't want to see the bodies. He didn't want to see where _they_ fell, so _he_ could escape. He didn't want to see the corpses of the only attachment's he'd ever made aside from Eris or his Ghost. He didn't want to see what the vex might have done to-

The _vex_.

His sobs ceased. Gradually, he managed to even out his breathing.

 _The vex._ He snarled mentally. His arm. His Ghost. His team... the vex had taken them all!

He reached for his belt. He pulled out the strip of Bear's cloak, and he no longer felt nostalgic. He felt... _angry_. He felt _hate_ , more than he's ever known, more than he'd ever felt towards the fallen, for Six Fronts and Twilight Gap, or the hive for the Great Disaster and Eris' trauma, or even the cabal, who had taken the city, and left him stranded here.

He hated the vex with every fiber of his being. What was he doing, cowering like this, like a weeping child? He was Asher Mir, and though the vex may have tried, he stood at the entrance of the Pyramidion, armed with intellectual fury, and an advantage the Asher of old hadn't had.

The desire for revenge, corrupted as the emotion may be.

He turned the dark and white-patterned fabric over in his good hand, feeling the edges of the rips he'd caused, tracing the white markings. _Do the Hunters not have a tradition for vengeance against the dark?_ So, almost mechanically, he took out his boot knife, and began cutting. Stitching fabric wasn't too different from stitching a wound(which he had had to to every once in a while, though under extreme circumstances), and though the job was messy for now, as the field repair kit was not necessarily meant for doing something like this, he could clean it up later.

At the end of the hour, Asher emerged from the overhang, the same rage as before burning in his chest as he looked at the still-open entrance to the structure that had cost him just about all the few thing's he'd treasured in life. But there was still that twinge of fear...

He reached up to his right, and tugged lightly at the square of fabric that now hung from his shoulder to cover the place where his vex arm fused with his flesh. He was no Hunter. He wouldn't wish to be. He couldn't wear Bear's cloak, but he could wear this one piece of it. Was it up not a symbol of the vow he now made?

 _I'll avenge you. Both of you. I'll make the vex suffer, as much as a network of inorganic intelligence's can suffer._ He shouldered Low-Grade Humility, and stepped forwards. _I also intend to save a life for once... just so you know._

* * *

Things were a little different going down than they were last time. Different in a bad way, because, again, he was facing jumps that were now very difficult. _Should have brought rope..._

Again, he thought he could hear Skeets in the back of his mind, berating him for being so short-sided as to not bring rope.

Then again, he hadn't had any rope to being with. Hopefully, the Huntress would be able help him get back up, as shudder-worthy and ego-bruising as the thought of being carried by anyone was. Of course, that was only if he could find her alive, and if he himself wasn't killed while in here. If getting down the initial entrance of the structure was so difficult, how would he fare the farther he got in?

 _Surely,_ he thought as he lowered himself off the ledge of the final jump, seeking the tiny foothold he'd noticed before descending, _if the vex were guarding the entrance to intercept her escape, she must be close to the entrance._ That meant he hopefully wouldn't have to go far, and thank goodness for that-

His thoughts were cut off as his foot slipped, and his grip failed on weak, dusty rock. He cried out, managing to twist as he fell, and threw his vex arm out as the ground met him. Pain shot through his right leg, and the impact of metal hand on rocky ground made an awful noise, the force resulting in what was certainly a 'pop' sound in the corresponding shoulder. He groaned, winded, and tested his leg. His hip and side, though definitely bruised, did not seem to be broken. His ankle, however, was another matter, and he could hear servos struggling as he flexed his bad arm. When he felt around his right shoulder, he found the source of pain in what was ostensibly a tendon injury that didn't matter to one with a mechanical limb.

None the less, it hurt to move his arm in ways that necessitated shoulder movement as well. Asher stood carefully, anger building as he took full assessment of his injuries. He released said anger in a string of curses, but that didn't make him feel any better. He took Low-Grade Humility off his back, ignoring the twinge of pain it brought with it, and continued, though limping, through the Pyramidion, sincerely hating every inch of the place from the blackest part of his soul.

It wasn't long before he heard vex. Vex, and fighting. Vex, fighting, and the familiar ring of a Dusk Bow doing it's job, a sound he never thought he may never hear again after Bear died, since Nightstalkers were so rare.

He dropped into a crouch, and tried to move forwards, only to suck in a breath as pain stung his ankle. He hugged the wall, using it for support, and came closer to what he remembered as Clary's 'favorite' part of their final mission together:

A field of literal glass shards, big and small, where gravity's effects on the human body were... inconsistent, at best. The Bladedancer had loved it, Asher had hated it, and Bear, being Bear, had merely stated the upcoming battle would be made more difficult. Right he was, for though Clary was joyfully flipping, spinning, and literally bouncing off the walls with her super, she'd required no less than half a dozen rez's by the end of the fight.

 _Didn't wipe the grin off her face, though..._ Asher shook his head, clearing his thought as he rounded the corner, and _immediately_ knew _exactly_ how the Huntress had not only survived Brakion, but made it this far on her own as well.

She was a badass.

The first thing he saw of her wasn't all that different from Clary's antics; stab one goblin, jump off it's corpse, use the zee-gee to her advantage, brace herself on one of the floating crystal-like structures as she shot several more vex with an odd-looking hand cannon, launch herself at a minotaur with a spike of void between her fingers. Stab it through the abdomen, pull the arrow out, pull her bow, fire it at another cluster of vex, sending herself spinning backwards, but still oriented enough to throw several shards of void Light at one of the vex, causing not just it, but all of them to explode.

Asher's brain was working overtime to figure out how she could use her Light like that, and so often without collapsing. She had been using her bow every time he saw her before. _Less thinking, more surviving!_ Not a thought he had every day, but very Skeets-like. Centuries later, and that damn Huntress was still rubbing off on him...

Asher brought a hobgoblin into scope, and fired before it could shoot the Huntress out of the metaphorical sky. The bow sung again, and the cluster that had contained the hobgoblin was tethered. He fired again, and they all exploded gloriously. Oh, he'd forgotten how _satisfying_ it was to watch vex blow up...

And in a matter of minutes the fight was over, and he was standing face-to-face with the literal woman of his dreams; bloodied, powered, able to obtain the supplies he desperately needed, and, by all accounts, the last Guardian he would want to meet in a dark alleyway aside from Toland the Shattered. Her eyes raked across his body for a fraction of a second. A bloodied, grim smile split her face, and then she spoke.

And they were the most Skeets-like words of greeting he'd heard since Skeets herself.

"Didn't your Ghost ever tell you not to mess with vex tech?"

* * *

 _This chapter is basically my answer as to why t_ _he heck the biggest Warlock elitist in the series only has Hunter friends(Eris, his team). Also, I refuse to believe that anyone could live so close to a location where past trauma occurred without having to deal with some PTSD first, or at least having an emotional breakdown to get it out of the way. It also further explains why he's so hell-bent on revenge, arm aside. I felt he needed something a bit more motivational than avenging a limb, and a sort-of-cloak-vow covers that nicely._

 _I always had the feeling it might not just be Hunters who make that particular 'promise'._

 _*que my own mental breakdown* I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO A CONSTANT BEEPING, SQUEAKING NOISE FROM THE PRINTER NEXT TO ME FOR OVER AN HOUR AND THERE IS NO WHERE ELSE TO GO! SO, I'M UPDATING EARLY! THIS MAKES NO SENSE!_

 _Jayfeattheris Awesome: Thank you! I'm going insane!^^_

 _jsm1978: Thank you! Please make it stop!^^_

 _mary: Thank you! I'm glad you like them!^^_

 _alienrapto: Thank You! I think this is an experimental form of torture, or an evaluation of the effects of 'a-qeee a-sqee a-sqee a-sqee' on the human mental state!^^_

 _*Screams at the school board to MAKE IT STOP*_

 _Ahem. Sorry._

 _Okay, so, I'm bringing some reality into the mix in the next few chapters. Namely, 'how the heck is now-Lightless Asher still alive after several weeks/more than a month on a planet that both does not support edible life, and it occupied by the Red Legion for their Io mining operation'. let alone so close to the big, scary cabal base, with very obvious scientific equipment OBVIOUSLY set up all over the place in his little hidey-cave next to the Pyramidion._

 _One of several plot holes in D2._

 _And yes, i do mean over a month; if you look at the traveler cage during different cutscenes over the course of the game, and manage to overhear NPC dialogue of a guy saying 'six months ago, I was a teacher', you can put the Red War in the general timeframe of it taking our Guardian a staggeringly slow 1-2 months to gather all the Vanguard, perhaps another two to three months for humanity to get organized enough for the assault to retake the Last City, followed by at least one month of cleaning up stragglers, holdouts, and spiffying up the new Tower enough that it's livable._

 _Yeah, I did the math. Probably the only math I've ever found necessary to do, since I'm dealing with a character who's technically terminally ill. There's just so much freaking stuff I've had to look up while writing this and planning it, I-_

 _The beeping. It's making me rant._

 _This authors note is too long. Like... 'Jayfeattheris Awesome's author notes' long(no offense Jay). Am I going to fix it? NO, because then all this typing was a waste of time. First thing I get home, I'm taking an ibprophen...*fails to spell the name of the only painkiller in her kitchen*_

 _Well, see ya!_

 _*jumps off Ghaul's ship willingly before he can throw her off*_


	6. Ready, Aim, Fire

_"With out backs to the wall, the darkness would fall, we never quite thought we could lose it all..."_

 _Ready, Aim, Fire- Imagine Dragons_

* * *

From the moment she regained her bearings and realized she was somewhere else, Allison had been been fighting. She didn't know how long it had been now-hours? Days? She didn't know how long it had been since first coming through, she just knew that she waited as long as she could while dodging the blows and shots of the massive hobgoblin, hoping D'Artagnan would soon come through the gate as well.

He never did. She fought her way off the island, unable to fend off the large Mind any longer(it was all she could do to dodge it's shots, and she was tiring), crossed the lake in hearty Light-aided jumps that made radiolaria splash up on her armor, stinging whenever it hit her bare skin. Her Light was drawn to the breaking point. She'd needed to rest, and was lucky enough to find an alcove in the vex architecture, where, mind, body, and Light exhausted, she fell into a restless sleep.

Her dreams were about the Iron Lords. Specifically, Timur. Perun, encouraging him to move on. Orwing, saying he could always find someone else. Him standing over her own grave, head bowed with grief. All of them, dead, and she had missed them entirely.

She woke in a cold sweat, tears streaming down her face. For her, it had been days, but for them it had been... centuries. _Centuries_ , oh, how she hated that word from the bottom of her soul! In such a span of time, there were so many ways a Chosen could die a permanent death. And even if Timur was still alive, would he want an old ghost walking back in on his life? Would he still love her?

Still wiping tears from her face, she pulled her rosary out. If there was any time for prayers, it was now-

Vex screeching very close by; it wasn't her nightmares that had woken her, only her instincts. She kissed the tiny wooden cross before putting the beads away, and drawing the void close, turning into shadow. Sheathed in void, she investigated the vex, and saw a large hydra Mind surrounded by a cluster of smaller vex units. _Once more into the fray, into the last good fight I'll ever know..._

She rolled out, shifted back into solid reality, and pulled her bow, striking the hydra right in the eye as it's shields exposed it. Again and again she let her arrows fly, killing both it, and it's companions before they could do much of anything. Watching the flames of void lick at the collapsed chassis of her enemies, Allison felt hollow. She sank to her knees, despair welling in her chest.

She didn't know where she was, she didn't know why this was happening. Her Ghost was gone, as far as she knew her friends and the man she loved were gone as well after all this time, she didn't even know if she was going up or down lower beneath the surface of whatever planet she was on! If she even was _on_ a planet!

 _Saint Anthony, I've been lost, and want I to be found..._

Loud, unnatural sounds from deeper places behind her stiffen. _It can't be!_ The Darkness. She stood, whirling around, the dark burns on her wrist throbbing, her breath sucked out of her lungs when she saw it standing near where she'd come in at. Nothing more than a long, humanoid shadow. Who knew shapes could be so terrifying? Had it followed her?

"Go away!" She pleaded. "GO AWAY!"

It lunged. Screaming, she ran, she rolled, she Shadestepped into the void again in a futile attempt to hide herself. She ran through the vex constructs, blind in her terror, so blind she failed to notice the creature was gone until she found herself forced to fight more vex.

* * *

Allison lost track of time again, so she couldn't quite say how long it had been since she'd seen the creature again when she reached a very... confusing place. More confusing than the field of gravity-defying cubes accented by better interior decorating than she'd thought the vex capable of(why would robots need carpet, anyway?).

Said 'confusing place' was the biggest obstacle she'd faced in this place. Mostly because... well, gravity was misbehaving. And that was never a good thing.

None the less, she tried to use it to her advantage as she fought the oncoming vex. They'd been getting thicker in number, and more aggressive the farther she came, which made her think she was either coming closer to the heart of their operations and they didn't want her to see what they'd been up to, or she was getting close to the entrance and they didn't want her leaving.

The room itself was choke full of floating, glass-like diamonds rimmed with vex metal, and shards of glass seemed to be floating throughout the air. There was also a large amount of vex between her and what appeared to be the exit, which seemed to made of... dirt? Rock? Definitely something that wasn't vex, and for the first time, she felt a glimmer of hope.

The only problem now was killing the vex and surviving. She'd taken a number of hits; nothing too severe, but she definitively looked gruesome by now, at least, and the shot that had grazed her side was hurting up a storm. That one had been the result of a very reckless move; at least, without a Ghost. If D'Artagnan had been with her, he would have had her healed in a snap if it had gone wrong and she'd been more severely injured, but without him, though she would still heal faster than average humans, she would be stuck with these wounds for a while, and they _would_ affect her combat if she let them.

She was flushed out the moment she entered the room. There was no easy cover to offer relief, so all she could do, all she could think of was to keep moving so it would be harder for them to shoot her. Keep moving, and tether as many as possible in a single shot as she could. She doubted she could pull many arrows at this point, she was just so tired. She ran in, stabbing a goblin and using it's corpse to launch herself at one of the floating crystals, bracing against it to get a better angle on several vex as she used her last remaining bullets to kill them.

Seeing the minotaur of their group taking aim at her, she kicked herself forwards, stomach lurching at the odd effects of the gravity and heat from the minotaur's blaster a reminder she couldn't afford to be sloppy. Forming an arrow between her fingers, she stabbed it through the massive vex's abdomen as she crashed into it, biting back a scream as radiolaria burned her hand. Forcing herself not to let go of the arrow, she pulled it free, the minotaur falling dead, and, disoriented as her body tried to twist against her will in the bad gravity, pulled her bow, and let the arrow fly into the middle of the vex that had been unable to get an angle on her when she was against the crystal.

It hit, killing one and tethering a considerable amount. The counter-force of firing her bow sent her spinning back, and for lack of anything else to throw at them, she produced several small throwing spikes made of void, and threw them at the vex. Only one died, but that was all it took to cause a chain reaction of void explosions as she re-oriented herself. Now, she was more exhausted then ever, but there were still vex shooting at her. She tore her radiolaria-covered glove off while she had the chance, and froze as she saw a hobgoblin that had managed to avoid the blasts. She had nothing to push off of, this was going to hurt like a-

She hobgoblin's abdomen exploded. She took one moment to both raise an eyebrow, and guess the origin of the shot. Following the theoretical line, she saw what seemed to be a man with a sniper rifle crouched near what she'd thought was an exit. _Ask and you shall receive, I guess._ Timely, too... but was it just her, or did it look like there was something off about his arm?

She shook the thoughts away for another time; right now, she had to escape. And if someone else had gotten _in_ , that meant she could get _out_. Just that knowledge alone gave her what she needed to pull her bow once more, biting her tongue on accident as she tried to banish the spots that danced in her vision at the action.

* * *

"Didn't your Ghost ever tell you not to mess with vex tech?" Ask and you shall receive... a guy who certainly looked like he'd recently made some terribly stupid decisions when it came to enemy technology. And there was no question he was a Chosen; a surgical shooter like that, with robes, and in the middle of enemy territory? Definitely a Warlock if she'd ever seen one. And an awoken, at that.

Her only questions were... why the vex arm? And why was he so well-armed? _That gun looks like nothing we have._ Like it was new, or close to it. New and advanced; the Iron Lords only had a few sad rifles and a couple of hand cannons to their names when it came to guns.

"I didn't get this by choice!" he defended snappily. There was about a mountain of stand-offish attitude in his voice. "And I would say the same thing to you, if you wound up in the Pyramidion!"

"As you said; not my choice. And my Ghost is actually the one who made me do it." she tried to give a wry grin but nearly failed. Poor D'Art.

"Then... what... why accuse mine of..." he sputtered, face turning purple with frustration.

"Try not to blow any brain cells, Warlock. I was trying to lighten the mood." she walked past him. "How did you get in? Is the exit close? I've been trying to find a way out of here for... well, I've lost track of time, actually."

"Over a day." the awoken blurted. She looked at him, eyebrow raised, and he shuffled his feet, favoring his right leg. _How would he know that?_ "My... affliction curses my sleep with information regarding vex activity in the area. It includes... unwilling infiltration into the optical arrays of local vex minds."

"That sounds like it sucks, guy." _Destiny, then._ "And just who is my knight in dirty Warlock robes?"

"They aren't dirty!" he snapped. "Merely unkept!"

"Name, or I'll just keep calling you 'vex-arm guy' in my head." she waved his attitude off. She'd dealt with Warlords; one cranky Warlock should be a breeze to deal with.

"Asher Mir." he shuffled in a way that brought to mind the image of an indignant exotic bird. "And the exit is... well up. And I..."

His voice trailed off at a grumble.

"Pardon?"

"There are...erm..."

"Yes?"

"There are... jumps that I can't... quite... make..."

"There, you got it off your shoulders. Good boy points to you, Asher."

* * *

After roughly half an hour of light-assisted jumps and a grumbling Mir asking her to 'never speak of this to anyone', Allison was shocked by what she came out of the 'Pyramidion' to find. A planet unlike she'd ever seen(though she'd only been on three in her lifetime), a sky dark with distant lighting, stars obscured...

And a massive gas planet looming in the sky, with other moons scattered about.

"Is that one of the outer planets?" she asked. "Saturn or Neptune?"

"You don't know Jupiter when you see it!?" was Asher's exasperated response.

"Perhaps I should clear things up a bit; I was only in there"-she jerked her thumb to the open entrance-"for, according to you, a day. But before I went through the gate that brought me here, my Ghost told me I'd been in some kind of time loop for the last several centuries. Didn't specify how many, but it was plural."

"Centuries?" the bushy eyebrows and darker face paint made his subsequent 'shocked and perplexed' look quite amusing to see.

"So, for future reference, do forgive me if I've never seen Jupiter before. We only had one ship, and Haakon had a penchant for joyrides. Is he still around?" For some reason, this seemed to fluster him once again. _For someone who's so stuck-up, he's rather easy knock off balance._ Such was often the way of things. To get out of the pit the entrance was situated in required several more loaded jumps, during which Asher was shockingly quiet as she dented his pride all the more.

"You didn't answer me." she started once they were back on solid ground.

She had to know.

"About what?" he seemed to be dodging the question. There went that foot shuffle again, and this time his left hand went up to tug lightly at the square of fabric that hung over his right shoulder, hiding what was no doubt a gruesome-looking fusion of flesh and metal.

"Haakon." she said squarely. "The Iron Lords, are they still around?"

She held her breath, bracing herself, because the look on his face was that of a person who was not good at delivering bad news. She'd met plenty of people to recognize that look, and she was keen enough to know people in general.

"They're... well... they're... dead." What was the point of bracing yourself for a spear to the heart when it _hurt_ this much anyway?

"All of them?" she asked quietly. Surely... no enemy was terrible enough to kill that many united chosen? There had to be survivors... there had to be _one_ , at least...

"One of them survived. Er, Saladin." Again, the shuffling, and he was twisting that square of fabric in almost desperate manner.

She tried to swallow but couldn't. She'd known there was little chance...

But still. It felt like a black hole had opened up inside of her.

"Ahem, we can't stay here." Asher cleared his throat. Multiple times. How many nervous ticks did this guy have? "The vex will find us if we're lucky, and the Cabal will find us if the continuum is against us. Whatever you did for grieving in the Dark Age or whenever you're from, you need to do it _later_!"

She couldn't stop her scowl in time. Perhaps 'insensitive' wasn't quite the word to start using yet... but it was early. She blinked as something he'd said didn't register right.

"Cabal? What are cabal?" this warranted another flustered display of indignancy. Alllison now knew that this was going to be a long day.

* * *

Once they got to what Asher called 'a general location that put them at less risk of discovery and subsequent disintegration', with the aid of a truck that was just about out of fuel(she never thought she'd see the day she would ride in a working car), the Warlock started to explain their current situation using flamboyant large words and extensive gesturing.

Typical Warlock behavior that she'd gotten quite used to since marrying-

 _Don't think of him._

And the current situation could be easily summed up by her with far less words than Asher was using.

"So... we're screwed?" she raised an eyebrow. He scowled at her.

"Crudely put, but _yes_ , we _are_!" he puffed his chest out like he'd just proved a very important point and thus won an argument. Allison rolled her eyes. _Scientists._

The cabal(a militaristic race that hadn't reached the solar system until long after her time) had taken something call the Last City, all Guardians had lost their powers, and Asher(and herself, subsequently) had been stranded here by the overtaking and destruction of the 'Guardian' base that had been on this moon, called 'Io'.

"Do you know what the Red Legion did to the Traveler to take away Ch-Guardian powers?" she asked.

"Who says they did something to the Traveler?" the Warlock raised both eyebrows.

"You said this Last City was built beneath it. That you brought all of humanity into one, cozy, giant target." she explained. "My... my husband put years of research into our powers. We're connected, all of us, like a giant spider web. Traveler at the center. And if you shoot the center of _anything_ out, what do the sides do? They fall inwards. Collapse."

He blinked at her. Simply _blinked_.

"What? Surprised? I might be centuries out of my zone, but I still know stuff." she smirked at him. "Like what a bad military decision looks like. What were they thinking, bringing everyone to one place like that? _Asking_ for a large-scale attack?"

"Oh, there have been plenty of those." Asher assured her, finally sitting down. There was a sudden tiredness in his eyes. "Too many, if you ask me. The Titans, ever-insistent that their precious wall would keep everyone safe. Titans were never the brightest of Guardians. Your Iron Lords fought in the Battle of Six Fronts. They were dead by the Battle of Burning Lake, the Great Disaster, Twilight Gap. Pity, too; could have used their numbers. How many Guardians were there in your time?"

"None. It was kill or be killed. The Iron Lords were the only ones united. Well, united equally, anyway." she told him, the pain in her chest intensifying as she spoke of her now-dead comrades.

"I meant _numbers_!" Asher threw his arms up in exasperation, and muttered something about... a bear? _Odd._ "How many people had powers? How many Chosen?"

Allison released a breath as she realized what he was asking... and why, if the look in his eyes meant anything. "More than you would think, seeing as everyone was constantly trying to kill each other, or killing lone Ghosts when they found the opportunity."

"After yesterday, taking into account how many Hunters may have been away at the time, how many Titans would have thrown themselves at the problem, how many..." it was Asher's turn to take a deep breath, "how many Warlock Orders would have been using the storm to meditate or catch up on research... I don't think there are more than two hundred of us out there anymore. At least, if they were lucky."

"Numbers had to be low to begin with for that kind of prediction. What kind of battle was there?" she inquired. It could only be a fight that would do it.

"The Great Disaster, mostly. Thousands died on the Luna, to a creature called Crota." he fiddled with the cloth on his shoulder again. "Another race you wouldn't know about; the Hive. They cracked open the moon, infested it. The Vanguard sent over half the Guardians to try to exterminate them. That plan backfired. Let's just say... I'm glad to not have been a part of the fighting."

"Damn..." she sighed. Centuries, and things had gone downhill drastically. _Probably because they started worshiping a giant dead AI. And gathered in a giant target. And didn't use their heads. And..._

"I need a walk." she announced. She had to clear her head, and figure out what was wrong with her, because certainly she shouldn't be _this_ underwhelmed?

"Don't wander off. And we still need to talk about obtaining supplies!" her only response was a grunt. What kind of supplies could they get from a bunch of Roman-escue space turtles, anyway? She got about five feet of distance before his yell stopped her in her tracks once more. "Hey! You never mentioned your name!"

She almost laughed. Why would her name be important anymore? It didn't matter if she told him or not... but part of her still was reluctant to tell him. Even if 'Allison Rose' may have been lost to time and long since forgotten, that old, nagging rule of 'never tell anyone your real name', the rule she'd learned from the hard life of an often-wandering Chosen, still rang in her head.

Perhaps that was why she used that bothersome nickname Skorri had given her to make her more 'iambic'.

"Just call me Darkrose. It's truer than my other one, anyway." and with that, she walked away... unwittingly leaving Asher Mir to wonder where he'd heard that name before.

* * *

"I know you have your reasons... but why me? And why now? And... is he happy?" this planet got awfully cold at night. No matter; if she could still feel the old beads, it meant her fingers weren't frozen yet.

Which meant, the clock on her moment of solitude still had some time left on it. She shut her eyes, feeling the tears she'd held back all day continue to leak down her face. Timur wouldn't want a lot of tearshed on his account; he'd much rather have few good jokes, knowing him. Having _known_ him...

She clutched at her ring with a sob on her lips. Oh, by all that was holy, this _hurt_ , more than any deaths she'd ever endured, more than any wound she'd ever had. That.. that _idiot_ , her wonderful, pseudo-collage-professor man-child _idiot_ who could recite all of Newton's laws by heart but couldn't remember where he put the tool he was currently holding.

It would have been better if she'd never stuck around to help him...

 _"No, hold your hand open like this. Palm out." she instructed for what felt like the thousandth time. And even her patience had it's limits. "Now, focus. Focus on fire. The shape, the heat. The potential."_

 _Timur shut his eyes, trembling. Like the last several attempts, he made the mistake of clenching his fists as he tried to summon his powers for the first time._

 _"No! Dammit!" Allison gasped, ready to pull her hair out._

 _"I-I'm sorry. I just can't do it." Timur stuttered, flinching. "Maybe I'm just not... not..."_

 _"You're a Chosen, alright." she snapped. "Otherwise, Kitty wouldn't have been able to bring you back."_

 _"Maybe I'm a dud." he suggested dejectedly, picking at the sheets on his bed. Sighing, she sat down next to him, deciding to try something new. She placed her hand on his back, and pulsed her Light soothingly._

 _"Do you feel that?" a rhetorical question; of course he felt it, he stiffened and then relaxed, and he shut his eyes._

 _"Yeah." he sighed. "That's... that's nice. But how do you-"_

 _"No. No 'buts'. Just... focus on_ my _Light right now." time to see if this could work. Careful as not to flood his body and cause pain, she let her Light trace his. The young man took a deep breath. "You feel that? That's how the Light in your body behaves. That's_ how much _of it there is. And it's all yours. You_ can _control it. But don't let it control you."_

 _He twisted to look at her, and slowly, she eased her Light away._

 _"I... I'm afraid. Of being burned." he admitted._

 _"It's_ your _fire." she reminded him. She got off the bed. "Now, tell it what to do."_

 _He opened his hand, and, shutting his eyes, managed to use solar Light for the first time at last._

Allison took the ring of the chain it hung from, turning it over in the light of Jupiter. It was a rough little thing with a shard of uncut jade melted into the middle. The idiot had insisted on making the rings himself, and she'd never quite plucked up the courage to ask someone who actually knew how to make rings to create an actual set. It was like when a pet brought you something gross and chewed-up, but if you didn't keep it they'd give you the most heartbreaking of looks(and, unfortunatly, Timur had the best 'puppy eyes' out there).

Now, however... she was glad he'd made it himself.

Removing her other glove, she slipped it onto her finger.

* * *

 _This chapter seriously took it out of me. Luckily, the one that comes after is at a good stage of progress. So good, I might update again later this month instead of waiting until next month._

 _..._

 _ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I JUST FINISHED SCHOOL AT LAST! WHOOOOOOOO! I'M FREE! Master has given Sarcasm a High School Diploma, Sarcasm... is... freeeeee!_

 _Free to write my little heart out. Collage was never an option for me; too stressful, full of classes about things that I'll suck at forever, including a diet of nothing but cup noodles and life hacks, and have you seen the news lately? Not a place I want to be, unless I have a death wish. Collage students are worse than this year's incoming freshmen, and they're pretty bad._

 _alienraptor: tell me about it!_

 _jsm1978: I can understand busy. Busy is a problem for those of us addicted to reading and writing. As for update times, I'm no stranger to the whole 'two months' thing, either; it actually took me three to get over my writers block for my Mass Effect fic. Hmmm, maybe I should come up with a fic that explores different ways to shut Asher up... though only time will tell if Darkrose won't shut him up for good on here own._

 _Ahhhh. I just relaxed for the first time since I was four. Feels good. Now, If you don't mind, I'm going to spend a month pretending to look for a job, while sleeping till noon, and eventually get tired of that game before I volunteer at the library, because I've practically lived in the school library for the past few years._

 _At least it means I'll have a good reference, lol. It'll also mean I have more time to work on my original novel, which I've finally finished the planning stages for. Now I just need to write it... and find an artist more decent than I, lol. As for what it's about... lets just say, the thought that initiated it was 'What if Mass Effect and Lord of the Rings had a baby?' and leave it at that._

 _Fare Thee Well! VERY WELL! /)^^(\_


	7. The End of the World

_"How do we live after the end of the world?"_

 _After the End of The World- By TryHardNinja_

* * *

 **Six Weeks After The Attack...**

He stared as the funny red liquid(was it just him, or was it a lighter color than it was supposed to be?), mind blank save one thought, and a dark, primal one at that, more of an old instinct than a thought, really.

 _Doesn't that look tasty?_ And contained in it was the one thing he craved the most; salt. Glorious, sustaining _salt_. Or, at least it would taste like salt. If he needed it so badly, there would be little actually in his bloodstream-

Asher cut the gruesome, primitive thoughts off by wiping his blood off on his robes, hissing through his teeth as the fabric rubbed against the edges of the small cut. He tried to forget his moment of weakness, and went back to studying the latest readings from the Pyramidion; it was just about the only thing that could distract him from the hunger pangs.

He wouldn't be so hungry if there weren't two mouths to feed now instead of one; his rations weren't going as far as he thought they would, though Darkrose didn't need food as badly since she still had her Light. In the weeks since they had met, his ankle had healed, though his shoulder still pained him, and as far as Nightstalkers went, Darkrose was even quieter and solemner than Bear had been.

Understandable, seeing as she seemed to be grieving. But the quiet was starting to get to him; he came to Io for blissful solitude, but even that was best enjoyed in small amounts.

Darkrose's wounds from the escape had healed completely, but the Huntress was distant company at best. What time he didn't spend studying, he spent explaining the events of the past few centuries, with little conversation in return. There was no debate, no comments, she just _sat there_! It was a little unnerving.

And though her skills helped, they did not slow the impending starvation he was being faced with. She had, indeed, managed to sneak into the cabal base several times to steal water, but cabal food was incompatible with the human and awoken digestive system. Maybe if they cooked it hot enough... but he didn't want to run the risk. Besides; cooking would burn all the blood out of the meat...

He shook his head, and shut his eyes.

Vex technology ran off of radiolaria; an organic-based, saline substance that basically controlled the movement and of a vex unit. The closets equivalent that could be found in a human-or in this case, and awoken- was, unfortunately, blood. Namely, the sodium electrolytes in his blood. Now, there wasn't a whole lot of salt in those ration bars, so the most he could do for himself was cut back on how much water he drank.

Which was also unhealthy. Really, nothing helped at this point, and he was already experiencing a sort of chronic fatigue because of his slow descent into hyponatremia.

His terminal beeped to let him know the results of the scans had arrived. Wiping his cut hand off on his robes again so he wouldn't get blood on the keys, Asher returned to the one good thing that had happened in the past month; he'd been able to return to his research. Sure, he was slowly dying of starvation, sure, his bad shoulder bothered him to the point of sleeplessness, sure, he was still living in a broke-down truck, and _sure_ , he was constantly exhausted because of all three problems, but at least he had _science_!

After weeks of watching the cabal, analyzing their patterns, operations, and transmissions, he'd deemed it safe to return to the little research outpost he'd been setting up the day of the attack. He'd added some new features to it, as well, thanks in part to Darkrose, who'd taken the initiative to steal cabal radios, among other things, during her water theft excursions.

Not only did he have eyes on the vex for the sake of science, he also had an ear to the cabal mining operations. He'd intercepted a number of orders, even one or two that had saved his life by way of warning him where NOT to be. He'd also learned one or two things about the situation back on earth, but not much; the cabal were still trying to stamp out a holdout or two, their leader's name was 'Ghaul', they were called the 'Red Legion', and their operations were nearly complete.

Nothing about the Traveler, or the City.

And he still hadn't heard from Eris yet.

He felt a prickle of apprehension when he saw the results. For the vex, little had changed, save a rise in activity due to the cabal presence(and he knew that without looking at the readings; he'd seen Minds directing the battles in his dreams). But from Io itself... the readings were enigmatic at best. The cabal were drilling into the planet, they had been since they first arrived, but he nor Darkrose had intercepted anything having to do with why they were drilling, or what they were drilling for.

Io had been chosen as the Vanguard's jovian outpost because most Guardians considered it a sacred site; there were frequent pilgrimages. Albios' memorial was also here. The Traveler had never finished terraforming the planet; it had photosynthesizing planet life, but none of it was edible, and the few life forms that had evolved weren't, either. The entire moon was still brimming with the residual energy of the incomplete terraforming process.

Asher sighed, and sat back in his chair, seeking respite from the pain in his shoulder. Clary had always bugged him about bad posture, always tugged him upright when he was slouching at the terminal again.

Back then, it had been an annoyance; he was a Guardian, posture didn't matter. What did she know, anyway? She was a Hunter, and practically a baby by Guardian standards. Only seven years old.

Now that he was Lightless, he could see her point; his bad habit was resulting in pain, and a Hunter would know many things about careful bodily positioning, as to them, stance was everything.

Only _seven_ , by the light, she'd been so young...

He shook his head, and decided to try sending another message to Eris.

* * *

 _Eris,_

 _Things have gotten worse. I don't know where you are, I still don't know if you can hear this, but I truly hope you've managed to avoid the Red Legion. Red, indeed; I've run the numbers, and very red is the Guardian blood they've shed. I'm not certain how many of us are left out there._

 _Darkrose has remained unchanged. Still grieving, I think. She still fights well, despite the fact her Ghost is gone, but I'm afraid she might become reckless. Perhaps not on purpose, if my assumptions on her religion are correct, but in the chaos of a battle, I can't help but fear she'll forget she isn't immortal anymore. She heals fast, because she still has her Light, but she's still from the Dark Age._

 _I was only reborn at the edge of that time. Bear lived through most of it. Back then, dying was far more common. Guardians, back then, were used to death; it could happen from the most trivial of things. Infection, starvation, lacerations, diseases, hypothermia, heat stroke. They were_ used _to letting these things happen in their day-day activities; Bear says-said they were considered inconveniences by most. They let it happen to them, refusing to stop._

 _These days, we can just use a sparrow for travel- Newton's Laws, my world for a sparrow! It would make this situation a little less unfortunate!_

 _I'm tired, Eris. I don't know if it's because my Light is gone and the ageing the vex caused is catching up to me, or if it's hyponatremia. The latter is the most likely case. I'm suffering fatigue, and I wish for nothing more or less than that very simple mineral; salt. My body, and the technology it is suffused in, is begging for it, and yet, I'm beginning to hate it._

 _Should I ever find a way to reverse this process, I doubt I will ever eat salty foods again!_

 _Darkrose is returning. Please respond at earliest possible convenience; Asher out._

He flicked the recorder off and sent the transmission as the huntress approached. Her steps were heavier than usual, and-

 _What?_ He blinked at her when he saw what she was carrying over her shoulder.

It was one of those... war beasts the cabal liked to use. It was undoubtedly very dead.

"I thought you might like to see if we can eat this thing." she heaved it off her back, and dropped it's red-scaled body to the ground. In the more desperate hours of the night, when his cravings were at their worst, Asher had wondered if they might eat a cabal, but he always tried to kill the thought when he had it. They were in a desperate survival situation, yes, but he refused to endure such an act. Even _he_ had trouble stomaching the thought of eating another sentient being.

Even if his blood still screamed for the salt in the meat.

But here was a war beast, and something he hadn't considered at all. This was, though alien, still an animal. Not sentient. It may have even been the same beast that killed that Huntress he had found. And it was still bleeding...

"Mir?" Darkrose's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he shut his mouth, trying to hide the way the blood made his mouth water. Shame flushed through him; most people didn't look at blood and have the word 'sustenance' flash through their head like a neon sign.

"I need to run tests on it to be certain it won't make us sick." he said on autopilot, trying to keep his eyes away from the dead animal. He tried not to think about it's crimson life staining it's own metal claws, the copper odor of-

 _Maintain you decency, Asher Mir! Your mind is sound, even if your body is not; act like it!_

"That's why I brought it here." the Huntress shrugged, face blank as ever. "How long will the tests take?"

"Long enough this one won't be edible anymore, if it even is in the first place." he grunted, striding over. He would need a tissue sample.

"Then let me know once it's done; I can kill another, and we can eat something real." eat something real. Clary's voice floated through his mind;

 _"Man cannot live off MRE's alone!"_

He swallowed. Oh, what he would give for an _actual_ MRE...

He blinked as he realized Darkrose was leaving, wordless as ever. He tried to find something else to say, but found his mind empty of things that might possibly initiate a conversation that went beyond 'hi, here's more news and a dead war beast, bye'. He wanted to use _words_ , dammit! Spoken ones, with long syllables! He wanted to talk; before, when he was on his own, he at least had Eris or Caroline to yap to, but now the only person around was himself, and Darkrose spent as much time away from him as possible.

The odd loneliness he'd admitted to Eris during his first message was growing still. How _did_ Hunters do it? Especially Hunters like Bear, whom wasn't as talkative with his Ghost as most Guardians were. Then again...

Bear had been weird, even by Hunter standards. _Especially_ by Hunter standards.

 _He'd never gone looking for either of them, but today was an exception. His mind was still rife with fury, even after his trip to the Reef with Clary._

 _'_ Achieved the objective'. _He thought stormily as he stomped through the Tower halls._ Idiot. Coward. Acting like he _didn't_ leave them to fend for themselves against an inter-dimensional army withing an underground labyrinth of darkness! _It was hard to forgive a Titan like_ that _. Just take Crota's soul and run? Oh, why not leave my team behind while I'm at it; if I gave them cover fire, we might all make it out alive! Light forbid_ that _happens!_

 _But try as he might, he just could_ not _find Bear! The exo's injuries hadn't been as bad as Clary's(obviously), but while the Huntress had gone to the Reef of all places to unwind, Bear had stayed in the Tower._

 _"Caroline!" he exclaimed, growing more and more frustrated by the moment. "Locate Dimus!"_

 _"I'm a Ghost, not a Star Trek computer!" his one constant companion snapped. "But he's on the Traveler's Walk."_

 _As it turned out, not only was he on the Traveler's walk; he was over the railing, sitting cross-legged against one of the tiny patches of grass that hugged the Tower wall. And there was no mistaking the pose he was in._

 _"Are you_ meditating _!?" His brain tried to process exactly what he was seeing. A Hunter. Was_ meditating _. A_ Hunter _!_

 _"He_ was _." Cecidimus, the exo's Ghost, floated up from where he'd been sitting on his Guardian's head. Said Guardian let out a breathy sigh and turned to face the newcomer._

 _"If you must know, I find it relaxing. Close your mouth; you'll get lockjaw." Asher's mouth snapped shut._

 _"The assumption that maintaining a constant position will result in a health risk like so is a myth, both among Guardians_ and _the mortal!" he lectured. Golden eyes simply blinked at him. Bear had gotten new armor, but the three, dark claw marks that had rent the metal plate of his face remained; Dark damage his Ghost couldn't repair. It looked as if the edges had been hammered down, wielded, and buffed, the marks speaking for the Hunter's objections to having parts of his body removed to be entirely replaced._

 _Even if he repainted the ruined dark green, he might very well carry the new scars forever._

 _"It's just a saying." he turned his head to look back out across the wilderness. "How is she?"_

 _"Better than she was." Asher grunted, jumping the railing to join his... teammate? Friend? He wasn't sure. Not yet. He was still reluctant, even if the crisis three days ago proved he felt_ something _for the two Hunters. "I must say, I can't tell if she has Variks wrapped around her finger, of if he has her wrapped around his."_

 _"It's a mutual thing." Bear said. "They like to share stories... even if hers aren't the grandest compared to most Guardians."_

 _"She's young; of course she's seen little." the Warlock snorted._

 _"And how old are you?" usually something you didn't ask people... if they were mortal. When you were ageless, age gained a different meaning._

 _"Roughly three hundred." he didn't bother hiding the touch of pride in his voice. "I doubt most here can say as much!"_

 _"I'm five hundred and eight." Bear told him. His head snapped around to look at the exo, who didn't meet his gaze but still gave a wane, metallic smile as the sunset painted him. "I may even share a birthday with Commander Zavala; he's the same."_

 _That... actually explained a few things._

 _"What was it that you needed?"_

 _"I... er... how does a_ Hunter _meditate?"_

 _"How does a Warlock meditate?"_

 _"I...erm..."_

 _"I thought as much; you've never stopped thinking for one second in your whole life, have you?"_

He was snapped out of his memories by the taste of blood.

He'd taken the sample of the war beast's flesh... and had been licking the blood off his fingers without even thinking.

Horrified, Asher dropped the scalpel, and spat, shame flooding him like it never had before.

What was he turning into?

* * *

"It's safe." he told Darkrose the next morning. He knew it not only because of the test results, but because the blood he'd swallowed before realizing what he was doing hadn't poisoned him. "Go catch one. Make certain the cabal do not see you; they might already be wondering where this one is."

The Huntress merely nodded. "Find something to burn while I'm gone."

Fire. Of course. They would need fire in order to cook the meat with. As much as a crime as it may seem...

He shook his head. He was determined not to fall into that same primal line of thinking that he had the previous evening; he was a civilized person, not an animal, and he was determined to act as such! No matter what his body was asking for!

And so, body dragged down with it's usual problems, Asher went about trying to find things to burn. It proved... more difficult than he originally thought it would be. He could hear Skeets in his head again, from when she taught him how to find good firewood. Only after hours of searching did he manage to find a log that was dead enough to make a good fire out of. A small branch, at that, but fairly long(this was one instance where the vex arm came in useful; it made snapping the wood into pieces he could carry ridiculously easy), and he was utterly exhausted by the time he found it.

Asher used his vex arm to snap the wood in half with ease, and promptly sat down on the rock nearby, trying to banish the darkness crowding his vision. He took deep breaths, trying to ease away the pigheadedness he'd been overcome with. _I shouldn't have done this._ What else could he have done? Told Darkrose he was weak? That he couldn't gather simple firewood without the threat of collapse? That he was overcome with chronic fatigue?

A voice in the back of his head(which sounded suspiciously like Clary) said 'yes, that's exactly what you should have done. Do you want to collapse in the middle of enemy territory and die before you find a way to cure yourself?'

Well, to answer the internal question; no he most certainly did not! And he most certainly would _not_!

Wincing, he brought his good hand around to rub at his shoulder, which was bothering him again. It felt swollen, now. Dare he unfasten the shoulder clips on his robes? Dare he look? Asher shook his head. Here was not the best place for checking wounds.

When he felt the nauseating dizziness fade away, Asher stood slowly, and made made his way back to camp with the firewood. He took his time, unlike when he was searching, and used his bad arm to carry most of the weight so that his left wouldn't tire.

When he finally made it back to camp, he collapsed in his chair, exhausted. For several long minutes, he just sat there, head in his good hand, catching his breath. _I'm such a fool._ He was a fool for going into the Pyramidion, a fool for getting attached to his fireteam, a fool for coming out here in the first place, a fool for launching his suicidal mission to rescue Darkrose, and a fool for not mentioning just how poor his current health was. And look where it had gotten him; curled up in a chair, rendered inert and pathetic by a short trip to the edge of the Rupture and back.

He swallowed bitterly. He had to collect himself. If it were Bear or Clary, maybe he wouldn't mind so much; maybe he would ask for help. But this Huntress was, by all means, a stranger. A stranger from a bygone age, at that; an age where trust was hard to find, and everybody was a backstabber. He didn't care if she was supposedly an Iron Lord, it could all be a lie, and she could be a very clever con-woman for all he knew. Not all who were Chosen had been Guardians back then, according to Bear. It had been a dog-eat-dog world, Skeets had said.

The entire world had been the Crucible, that Titan who ran the arena had said.

A huffing noise interrupted him, and Asher looked up, gathering himself and trying not to look as exhausted as he felt. Darkrose was back. She dropped the dead war beast on the ground, and wordlessly began to set up the fire. Asher tried, he really did try. He tried NOT to look at the dead animal. At the blood. His mouth watered at the smell of it, coppery and rich and promising the salty flavor he'd been craving. But try as he might, his gaze locked on the carcass anyway, and once it did, he couldn't take his eyes off of it.

"So, what is it you need exactly?" The question caught him off-guard, but the reminder that he was in the company of another person, one whom he didn't want seeing such animalistic interest in the gore, didn't snap him out of his stupor as completely as it should have. Amber eyes were locked with his ice-blue ones, and regarding him with an intensity that made it very clear; she knew all was not well. Why should he be surprised? Even with hunger taking it's toll, even if he hide things as well as he could, he supposed it was only a matter of time before she noticed starvation wasn't what was causing the brunt of his illness.

But sick or no, there was no excuse for the primal, shameful, un-Warlock-ish answer that left his mouth.

"The salt in the blood." Asher blurted. As soon as the words left his lips and he realized what he'd said, he felt like he might be sick, and all he wanted to do was scream or leave, which wasn't an option because he was so light-headed after the firewood adventure.

Darkrose simply looked at him measuringly, taking in his barely-contained struggle not to throw up the half of ration bar he'd eaten that morning. Then, she quite simply shrugged.

"Alright then; not every day I meet a Warlock who likes his meat cooked rare." she said. He looked back at here, unable to take in what she'd just said.

"You act like wanting to consume blood like an animal is normal." he managed to choke out, voice hoarse and throat tight.

"Eating meat rare isn't that weird, Mir; Orwing's habit of chewing on limestone, on the other hand, _was_ weird." he nearly choked on his own spit; that the first time she'd mentioned any of the Iron Lords. Mentally, his brain listed the one she'd mentioned- _Orwing; Hunter, charted the Russian Cosmodrome, invented the skip grenade-_ and at the same time started to, once more, wonder why he couldn't, for the life of him, remember who Darkrose herself was.

He also had to calm the hell down before he freaked out about the fact they were having a _conversation_. A glorious, beautiful, _conversation_. Even if the topic was... not a favorable one.

"The vex technology in my body has... requirements. Saline electrolytes are the only suitable replacement of the radiolaria that would normally drive it." he explained, hoping for once that there would be more questions.

"Is that why you're so damn lazy?" He felt his blood boil. Okay, so maybe he could do without more questions.

"I'm doing research on the vex, analyzing cabal transmissions, and attempting to find a way to reverse _this_... process!" he gestured spitefully to his bad arm. "I'm not lazy! I'm far from it! In fact, I daresay I've done more work than you have; I certainly don't see _you_ toiling away day and night to unlock the secrets of alien technology!"

"Gee, tell us how you _really_ feel." Darkrose snorted sarcastically. This made him angrier, and angrier still when she started to light the fire. "I'll tell you when your food is ready."

Unable to think of anything else to spout off, he settled for going back to his research to try to take his mind off the blood smells. Which he barely managed to do. He could no longer focus, his gut hurt with the ache of hunger, and the sounds of a Hunter's knife tearing flesh triggered his salivary glands to flood his mouth. The smell of flesh burning really didn't help at all, either.

The sudden placement of their only plate, held level with his shoulder with still smoking, lightly-cooked cubes of alien meat piled on top of it, was what made Asher forget all the dignity he'd meticulously been trying to maintain. He snatched it away from her, not bothering to question the speed of the preparation, and started shoveling the meat into his mouth, nearly forgetting to chew. The war beast's flesh was rubbery, disgusting, and on any other day, the very idea of eating it would have made his stomach turn; but it tasted like _salt_ , and that was all that mattered.

"In my time, it was wise to prepare and eat food as quickly as possible in enemy territory so you could move on faster." Darkrose's comment snapped him out of his primal feasting when he was halfway through his meal(the first half being devoured in at least less than 45.06 seconds), and mortification froze him in the act of bringing another cube of meat to his mouth. "But I think you'll want to slow down, or you'll make yourself sick."

The shame, the terror, the horror of being caught acting like that, of realizing what he'd been doing, almost made him want to cry. Him. He never _cried_. Not even after losing it all; when he'd woken to be told about his team, his Ghost, seen his arm, all he'd been able to do was sit in a shocked stupor as he tried to process it all. But this... this was...

This was his humanity being stripped away. This was part of how the vex were killing him, wasn't it?

How to kill a human: take away their humanity.

Or awoken, in this case.

"Yes." he barely managed to choke out, through the blood, the tightness in his throat and chest, the desire to scream and throw the meat away that was only held at bay by the desire for food, for the salt within the blood that might take the edge off the sickness caused by vex tech sucking his life away.

He ate slowly after that, trying banish the shame, trying to choke down the war beast meat.

The earthquake and violent burst of light in the sky was almost welcome when it came.

* * *

 _Well, the fecal matter is about to hit the oscillating rotator. As you can see, Asher is not well and feeling a bit horrible. Hold on to your helmets; the next couple of chapters are going to be a doozy of a roller coaster. After months, I finally know exactly the kinds of personalities Bear and Clary had, so the flashbacks that happen during Asher's chapters will see them with more more consistent behavior._

 _'Cecidimus' is the latin word for 'fade'._

 _alienrapto: I believe D'Artagnan already explained why her Light hasn't been taken away. Allison still has her powers because she was still trapped in the time loop when the Traveler's influence was cut off. I'll explain later on in the fic how this is possible in more detail, but I'll just leave that for now._

 _Sorry there was no update last month; I got hung up on the second part of this chapter. I guess the fact I updated three times in January kind of makes up for it, though. Super excited for the Sandbox Update; Arctriders get a crucible buff, and as a devoted collector of PULSE RIFLES I'm absolutely thrilled! Although I ran Nightstalker in pvp for D1, in D2 I more often than not run Arcstrider, so the stealth nerf doesn't really make me that sad. The Nova Bomb fix for mayhem makes me VERY HAPPY, btw._

 _This fic is now available on Ao3, but I keep forgetting to add the rest of the chapters._

 _Lets see some more reviews this time! Pretty please? I worked so hard on this chapter and need to see feedback._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	8. When the Bullet Hits the Bone

_"Soon, you will come to know, when the bullet hits the bone..."_

 _'Twilight Zone', by Golden Earring_

* * *

Honestly, she was glad for the interruption. The tension in the air could choke a Kell, and she didn't know if she'd be able to play shrink at the moment, much less to someone as rude as Asher Mir. The obvious internal crisis he was experiencing, and the near inhuman appetite for bleeding flesh not withstanding, there was obviously much more going on here than met the eye.

The salt thing? Okay, she could accept that. That was something she could help with; Jolder had had a preference for raw beef, 'eating it like the ancient French did', and Allison had picked up more than a few ways to serve bloody food from the culinary buff of a Titan. She only hoped the rules for beef applied to war beast; if not, the Warlock wouldn't be in a good state later, especially considering the way he'd inhaled the first half of his portion.

The silent suffering? The focus on scientific distraction? An aversion to human touch like he thought everyone was disgusting(which she'd seen on the day they met, when she was helping him with the bigger jumps), and a personality likened to an angry parrot? She wasn't sure what to do about that. She wasn't even sure what to do with herself, even after nearly two months. Did one ever really get over losing so _much_?

Besides; if all her attempts to get cheery, talkative, open-hearted Timur to talk about 'it' were any indication, she doubted she could convince this cantankerous, closed Warlock to open up either. When they got back to civilization, she was going to find whatever singular, unlucky soul he was close to and make _them_ deal with it.

The ground pitched, and she nearly fell into the fire. Asher made an odd yelping sound, and she herself swore colorfully. The sky lit up, and a roar filled the air.

"What's that?" she demanded, looking up. There were ships in the sky, ones of a design she'd never seen before but bearing the unmistakable markings of the Red Legion. A beam of white energy was flowing up into Io's atmosphere, from the direction of the main drill site.

"Anti-umbral energy! Seismic event! Those ignorami released a pocket of unstable post-terraformation energy!" Asher yelled. The ground had stopped shaking, but the ships were still roaring as they exited the atmosphere, and the sky was still bright. The Warlock was rushing about now, food on the ground and forgotten, tending to his equipment.

"Will this cause any more problems?" she asked, picking herself up.

"No! But... THRALL SPIT!" he snapped suddenly, checking his computers and tapping out multiple commands. "I'm picking up massive, scattered neutrino readings!"

"And that would qualify as a problem." she nodded. "Because... what does that mean, exactly?"

"There are Taken on Io." She raised an eyebrow. He'd mentioned the Taken before. She'd gotten the general vibe that they were bad news.

"Doing what?" she inquired, striding over to look over his shoulder.

"I don't know!" he snapped. "I can't tell _what_ they're doing, just that they're concentrated near the drill site! They must have been attracted to the pulse!"

"I should go check it out." she said, backing off. "If they're as big a problem as you made them out to be, this could be bigger than just a few of them and some running Cabal."

"Yes." he said. But before she could get far, he shouted quite suddenly. "Wait!"

"What?"she twisted to look at him.

"Stay here; I'll get you an earpiece." she rolled her eyes.

* * *

 _Why do I get the feeling he's worked with Nightstalkers before?_ As Allison crept along the old paths, she looked at the timed release device Asher had given her. It seemed as if the technique of making smoke with one's Light lived on, but these were a bit more advanced than the old glass bottles she had used as catalysts in the old days; back then, she'd fill them with compressed void-smoke and throw them at the enemy, shattering the glass and releasing the gas.

These? Asher had given her three of these oval-shaped smoke bomb catalysts, one of them even designed to latch on to a wall or the target before exploding. He'd built all three very quickly, and with a practiced efficiency that made her wonder how many Hunters he'd worked with before her, or if he'd been part of one of those 'fireteams'. _He's proven he's a proficient sniper._ A sniper, a genius, who knew how to supply a Nightstalker so quickly? _Maybe he was part of some sort of Guardian spec ops group or something._

Theories on Asher Mir's past aside, there was clearly more to the sick Warlock than a rude personality and a high IQ. Kind of how there'd been more to Timur than a dorky grin and a penchant for bad ideas.

 _"What are you DOING!?" she screamed. He was on the monastery roof._

 _During a thunderstorm._

 _With a metal rod._

 _"TESTING A THEORY!" he screamed back down over the blast of thunder and the roar of wind and rain._

 _"That you WON'T get struck by lightning if you stand on the roof with a metal poll!?" Okay, his ideas had gotten stupider and stupider ever since he'd suddenly woke up one morning and_ finally _got hit with the realization that he couldn't actually die. While she was happy not to have to deal with his insecurity or night terrors anymore, this was getting ridiculous._

 _"THAT IF I GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING I'LL BE ABLE TO USE IT!" he called back down excitedly. She buried her face in her hands, as he was struck not moments after speaking. Still pinching the bridge of her nose, she strode back inside. One of the nuns looked at her sympathetically._

 _"That poor boy up to it again? All this can't possibly be good for him." Allison looked at her, feeling tired._

 _"He'll learn better; most of them do. Well, the sensible ones. Ugh... do me a favor? Pray for me; my patience is_ this _close to snapping." with that, she strode through the halls until she came to the stairs that led to the roof. Timur was already there, dripping wet and grinning like an idiot. His hair was spiked up all over the place, and Kitty hadn't replaced his eyebrows yet._

 _"I almost did it!" he practically squealed. She only glared at him. And he kept beaming at her like the stupid young chosen that he was._

She nearly laughed at the memory. Now, Asher didn't seem like the type to stand on rooftops with a metal poll(during a thunderstorm). If anything, he was the type to make someone else to it for him while he took notes.

Feeling just a little lighter, and a little sadder, she continued on the road.

* * *

"Asher, It looks like they're doing some kind of... ritual." there was no other way to describe it. And the dark orb in the middle of it all looked like something out of a nightmare, not to mention the shadowy figures surrounding it, seeming to feed it. She felt the air itself chill as she approached, and recognized the weight of Darkness in the area.

 _"Well? Stop them! I've put out a looped Skyshock alert, but I doubt anyone will hear it."_ Asher grumbled from the other end of the comm.

"Won't the Cabal hear that?" she asked.

 _"No; they'll be well out of range by now."_ he assured her. _"Now, stop the ritual! Target the wizards first, they usually lead things like this. Remove them!"_

"Wizards are the floating ones, right?"

 _"Yes! Now hurry; I've been monitoring the energy they're pumping, and I hypothesis that if you don't stop them, the planet may implode!"_

 _Well, that's bad._ Even _she_ knew what 'implode' meant, and she didn't feel like dying today.

"Any tips?" she flexed her fingers, imagining the arrows rolling through her hand. Distantly, she felt the void tug an pull, her and her Light responded in kind.

 _"Taken are slightly more susceptible to smoke disorientation. Even more so if you make the smoke toxic."_ Yes, he had _definitely_ worked with Nightstalkers before. _"But they have a tendency to use arc shielding and flame shielding, and likewise weaponry."_

That might be more of an issue. No matter; she would find a work around... somehow.

"Okay. I'm going in." time to put a stop to this. Summoning a spike of void in one hand, she threw it at the nearest wizard while it's back was turned. It let out an unholy scream as her Light ate it's shield in a small explosion. It was a sound that made her very bones rattle, and she suddenly understood what Asher had meant when he called the Taken 'pure entropy'; that scream made even the air feel empty in it's wake.

Lifting her hand cannon, she put three bullets in the wizard's head before it could do more than screech at her and raise a claw. Scanning the area over with a sharp gaze, Allison turned her attention towards the next participant in the ritual; this one, thankfully, behind sever pillars of rock. A perfect opportunity for an ambush.

Stalking quietly along the rocks and wrecked metal, she rolled past a Taken cabal with a shimmering arc shield around it before it could spot her, and turned into smoke and shadows, becoming invisible to the naked eye. Now mere particles of void held together only by training and immense force of will, she snuck up behind the second wizard.

The thing about a shield, was that it was only useful against certain things. A Hunter landing on your back, and slicing your head nearly clean off your shoulders was one thing the Taken wizard's shields couldn't protect it against. Hands stinging from brief contact with the solar energy, Allison jumped off the corpse's back before it could collapse in on itself, the dead thing not even having time to loose another one of those awful shrieks. The taken cabal roared as if sensing the death of it's superior, and she rolled back into a shadestep state, running towards the third and final wizard. Now that two participants in the ritual were dead, the third would no doubt be noticing.

Her little assassination quest would have to end, and fast. There were more Taken gathering beneath the ball of dark energy, and none of them looked too friendly.

Sure enough, the third wizard wasn't as clueless as the first two, and it raised it's claws even as Allison approached. Shadowy figures were summoned out of thin air and began stalking around their master.

Allison returned to solid form, and threw a smoke bomb. The wizard shrieked, as did the shadow figures, as toxic smoke engulfed them all. Summoning a ball of void in one hand, she threw a vortex grenade into the cluster of confused enemies, and shot the wizard twice more just to be certain.

It dissipated in an eerie, final shriek.

"Asher, I killed them!" the ball of dark energy was lowering... and the Taken were angry at her. With screams and roars, all the black weapons were turning towards her, ans she barely managed to hide behind a crate in time to avoid being shot. "I also made the locals angry!"

 _"Yes, well..._ I _found backup."_ the Warlock smarted back; she could _hear_ him preening, good grief. _"Even if it is a Titan. And if you stopped them, how come I'm still getting scattered neutrino readings?"_

"Well, obviously, the rest of the team isn't dead." she told him dryly. "As I said; the locals are angry. You were saying about backup?"

 _"Ikora Rey."_ a new, feminine voice introduced. _"And who is this, Asher?"_

 _"Unimportant; I suggest we stop the Taken before we begin small talk."_ A deep, machanical baritone interjected.

 _"You!"_ Asher hissed, with a deep rage she'd never heard before. _"What are you doing here!?"_ _  
_

 _"And_ this _is why you should've let me do the talking."_ a lighter male voice sighed.

"Kill Taken now, bicker like babies later!" Allison snapped. She didn't have time to referee old grudges. At least, it sounded like an old grudge.

 _"Just don't turn your back on him!"_ Asher warned. Yup; definitely an old grudge. She ducked out of cover, pulling her bow, and fired a tethering arrow at the dark mass of Taken energy. The void trap activated, eating away at the black, liquid-like ball and casting it in a purple glow as the enemies around it found themselves suddenly hooked in place by strings of void Light.

Suddenly, what looked like an electric cannon ball shot out from the balcony entrance of the Cabal drill base, and a Titan came rocketing down, smashing into the Taken she'd trapped. _Huh. Looks like I'm not the only one who still has powers._

 _"Ikora; our new friend is a Nightstalker."_ informed the lighter voice from before. _"She still has powers!"_

 _"What?!"_

"Thanks for stating the obvious." Allison commented dryly as her new ally continued smashing his way through their enemies towards her. "I'll refrain from exclaiming 'oh look, that Titan still has powers'!"

 _"I'm getting a massive reading!"_ Asher warned. The ball of dark energy fluxed and exploded, throwing the Titan into her with the force of a rocket. She hit the ground, winded, as a bubble of black energy surrounded the pit that had been there moments before.

"I'm going to guess there's a massive, ugly Taken or other miscellaneous dangers in that bubble?" she coughed. The Titan, in red armor, didn't offer to help her up. _Ahhh, chivalry! Where's Silimar when you need him?_

 _"According to my hypothesis-"_

 _"Yes."_

"You, Hunter; distract it." the Titan ordered as she pulled herself up. _Okay, he's a pushy one._

 _"Don't trust him!"_ Asher countered immediately.

"Here's a plan; lets just kill it." Allison suggested, charging into the bubble.

It was like going underwater. Immediately, she felt her Light suppressed, and knew that any wounds she got here would take a long time to heal now that D'Art was gone. There, in the center, just as she predicted, was a massive Taken cabal.

She didn't waste any time. Rolling into a shadestep state, she wove around the enemies it had summoned, the bullets that were fired phasing through her void-and-smoke form harmlessly. Ducking behind the champion, she jumped up on it's shoulders, before phasing back into solid form and firing a wide-anchor shadowshot at the ground several paces in front of the massive enemy.

The strings of void Light caught nearly every attacker in the pit, and the champion stagger, as she predicted, unable to throw her off because of the distraction. She took out her kukri and slammed it into the champion's head, and with her other hand, threw a spike of void light at a Taken psion, it's death causing a chain reaction of void explosions as the slower Titan finally joined the fight and began mopping up the leftovers. Meanwhile, both hands free, she worked the blade until the thrashing cabal stopped struggling, and collapsed with a reality-shuddering groan.

Allison suddenly found herself on the ground as it dissipated. Pain lanced through her shoulder as she caught herself, and when she looked, it was to find her armor burned through. Huh. Not all all the bullets had missed as she thought. It didn't look serious, though.

"And you are?" The Titan asked, taking off his helmet. He was an Exo, red and white plated with blue eyes. He eyed her suspiciously. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"No. And just call me Darkrose." she managed to stand, and offered her hand. He didn't shake it. _Again; yay for manners._ "Asher, I think we're done here."

 _"Yes. Ikora, we must talk. Darkrose..._ 8 _... so must we."_ She raised an eyebrow in the Exo's direction.

"Alder-8." he shrugged. His Ghost appeared over his shoulder, and he jerked his thumb at it. "Hotel. Where's base camp?"

Well, he certainly didn't waste time with small talk, did he?

"This way." she waved him over in the direction she'd come from.

"How did you use your Light like that? I've never seen anything like it before!" Hotel asked, in the same light voice she'd heard earlier.

"What do you mean?" she raised an eyebrow. "Have Guardians forgotten how to fight in less than two months? I've always fought like that, I don't see what's so amazing about it."

Alder and Hotel exchanged a look, and followed her.

* * *

 _"Just call me Darkrose."_ Those were the words that silenced Ikora Rey. She'd heard that name before.

"Well, you've been here for over a month, and didn't even think to look for survivors!?" She was also now playing host to a furious Asher Mir. He was pacing up and down her ship, with what was ostensibly one of _her_ electrolyte drinks in one fist. Correction; it was now an empty plastic bottle, and he was already reaching for another one. At any other time, she would have thrown him out the airlock to teach him a lesson, but the gaunt, haggard, and obviously sickly Warlock was being given some leeway considering his needs.

The ones she'd been briefed about only a day before the attack. The day she signed off on his little project. The day storm warnings had grounded most ships, the day before she ran like a coward from her aflame city-

"I ATE A WAR BEAST THIS MORNING, DAMMIT!" was what snapped her out of her reverie. Asher's face was purple with fury, and he collapsed back into one of the emergency seats with a frustrated sigh, before throwing another now-empty plastic bottle across the small space. He used his vex arm to do this, resulting in an unnecessary amount of force behind the throw, leaving the bottle a pancake when it hit the wall behind her. She regarded him calmly as he buried his face in his good hand.

"Do you know who Darkrose is?" she asked quietly, trying to keep the excitement and terror out of her voice.

"I found her- _near_ the Pyramidion." he was keeping something to himself. "She's from the Dark Age, got caught in a temporal loop on Venus before entering a vex gate that brought her here."

"I just saw footage from Alder's Ghost; she's incredibly powerful for a Nightstalker." her own Ghost commented. No duh.

"So what? She's from the Dark Age, she probably knows things about her Light that most Nightstalker don't." Asher said flippantly.

"She knows more about void Light than _any_ Hunter because she's the first one to ever have touched the void in the first place." Ikora shot back. Asher looked at her like she'd sprouted eggplants out of her ears and started speaking lost Eliksni dialect.

 _"Again." Osiris commanded. Ikora tried again._

 _And again._

 _And again._

 _And Again._

 _"Stop." her mentor sighed. Panting, she scowled at him as he continued. "I was a fool to think a Warlock could master this technique."_

 _"But... we can master anything!" She boldly protested. She could-and would- master this technique! If it took a hundred years for her to learn how to throw Light spikes, then so be it!_

 _"Not if it was invented by a Hunter." the other Warlock said dryly. "Throwing spikes of void Light was a common move invented by Lady Darkrose; a sort of replacement for throwing knives, to escape the inconvenience of carrying too many blades around."_

 _"I've never seen other Hunters do that." she commented, shaking her head._

 _"They've forgotten!" he snapped bitterly. "And Darkrose was the first Nightstalker; she warped her Light in ways you and I couldn't possibly imagine in order to achieve what she did. Having stretched the form of her limits so far, she could probably outfight every Guardian in the Tower with the exception of Tevis Larsen!"_

 _"I fail to see any future where a_ Hunter _could do_ that _." she snorted arrogantly. Osiris' eyes narrowed._

 _"Then I see failure in_ your _future."_

"The... first?" Asher sounded a little dizzy.

"Yes." she swallowed, shaking off the last vestiges of the slightly bitter memory. "The first... and possibly the most dangerous Guardian who ever lived. Perun and Tevis both learned from her, and they passed the more well-known skills down to the Hunters who live today. And because she touched the void, Titans strove to summon fire, and we tried to call the storm. It was a chain reaction that still continues today. And now... she's back."

"Yes..." Asher murmured, eyes distant. She glanced away; she'd seen that look on Guardians like Eris and Saladin before. "Now I remember... Bear mentioned her."

Ah, Bernard-12. He could have been a Warlock for all anyone knew, the wise old thing. She had to admit, it had always peeved her a little that he never joined the Hidden; as a Nightstalker, he'd almost been as good as Tevis Larsen.

How he wound up in a fireteam with a new blood and Asher Mir of all people, though, had always been beyond her.

"They called her 'Darkrose the Lost', in the old stories." Ikora began. "A mission gone horribly wrong in the Vault of Glass. Three Iron Lords entered; only two came out, and neither of them was her. She was never seen or heard from again. But her skill remained legendary; they say she even tutored Timur when he endeavored to discover how a Warlock might wield arc energy."

"Asher; you found a legend." she pressed as the other Warlock began to look a little overwhelmed; likely by the fact something so important had slipped his memory and notice. "Not only that, but she still has her powers. Alder and Zavala might have helped spark the revolution... but Darkrose could win us the war."

* * *

"Well, shit." was all Allison could say when she was debriefed.

A cap on all Guardian powers except hers and Alders(because that was how life worked now, apparently)? Check.

Insane emperor bent on becoming an immortal demi-god? Check.

Sun-destroying dreadnought? Check.

Chosen one shtick? Check-a-mundo.

Oh, and don't forget the fact you're apparently a legend among Hunters. GREAT. _Lord, just end it now! I get you have plans but WHY ME!?_

Because that was DEFINITELY without a doubt the reason she was here. 'Hey, Allison; save humanity'. _Yeah, I'll get right on that._

"Nicely summarized." Hotel commented dryly with a snicker. Alder shot him a glare.

Another person who was doing the glaring was Asher. He was fixing Alder with a look that could have frozen wine or caused a blackhole, like he was trying to melt the Exo just by looking at him. His vex hand was gripping the edge of the table the four of them had eaten at(more or less; Asher had spent the entire meal glaring at Alder) while going over the plan.

Whatever had gone down between these two Guardians hadn't been pretty; that much was obvious. Ikora cleared her throat.

"Anyway, Asher has doubts about Zavala's plan to blow up the Almighty." _Lofty name. Ghaul is starting to sound like a narcissist._

"There is no doubt a fail safe." Asher said through grit teeth. "There is a warmind vault on Io. We could use it's systems to hack into the dormant NATO network, and triangulate the Almighty's position. After that, I will run several deep-scans of it's infrastructure and locate a weakness. With the help of Ikora's Ghost, we may be able to find a way to shut down the failsafes or bypass them entirely."

"We will also use this opportunity to scan the Cage. If there's a way to shut it down, even temporarily, we can use that." Ikora continued. "Even a minute of having our powers back full force could give us an edge. If we free the Traveler, remove the blockage, we might have a chance."

"Sounds like a plan." Hotel said, shell spinning. She felt her heart ache with loneliness. She hadn't felt the Ghost Link sever... but she could still feel a hole where D'Artagnan used to be. _I never even got to say goodbye..._

"When do we start?" Alder asked, standing ramrod straight. This man was all business; too much soldier. There didn't seem to be a person at all behind that stance.

"Tomorrow when we've slept, you myopic imbecile!" the fact that Ikora offered no admonishment, but only glanced at Asher witheringly, spoke volumes about how much she was used to dealing with him and his...

Attitude.

"Very well." Alder merely said. He turned heel and walked away. Allison raised an eyebrow in Asher's direction.

"Dare I ask what all that was about?" she inquired.

"He nearly got my-" he cut himself off, and took a deep breath before continuing. "He has a history of making poor tactical decisions, thereby nearly getting other Guardians killed irreparably."

"That was a long time ago, Asher." Ikora sighed. The Awoken man simply stood angrily, his chair scraping across the deck of Ikora's ship, and stormed off. He stopped halfway down the ramp.

"Darkrose... let's just say I wouldn't trust him with _my_ life." He strode off, and she doubted anyone else heard what he added next. "Or anyone else's."

* * *

 _Asher intensifies, and Darkrose gets some internal wit going. I was originally going to make her much more serious, but I didn't want her to become too dry a character. A month and a half later, and she's still dealing with some stuff, but that pre-Timur personality is starting to rear it's head again. She's kind of making a full circle journey._

 _jsm1978: No, the last thing in-game Asher needs is more salt; he's already angry enough. More than anything, I think he needs his Ghost back. And a hug. The March update really saved face, though; I'm having a lot of fun!_

 _alienrapto: Trust me, dude; I've done my research, I know everything about the vex at this point. I'm just sprinkling a little bit of head-canon speculation in-between the gaps._

 _Ahhh, if feels so good to be an Arcstrider and pulse rifle enthusiast right now. I can safely say, after the go faster update, I'm sitting pretty. So pretty, I wrote this chapter. I'm having a lot of fun with Darkrose and her powers; speculating on what Guardian's limits might be, how she might have broken those limits, the origins of some of the more mundane things in-game... Shadestep in particular. I was always a fan of the original D1 animation with that smoke effect, where your Guardian actually turns into shade... it always gave me a sense of 'wow, can those bullets even hit me'? And in D2, when Nightstalker dodge incorporated invisibility, I decided to combine those._

 _The void spike idea was born out of a personal epiphany I had one day while playing as a Gunslinger, actually; where the heck is my Guardian getting all these throwing knives from? And aren't they inconvenient to carry? Of course, in usual Sarcasm style, I began to overthink things, and soon decided that Allison, being the complacent woman she is and having no time at all to make a bunch of knives to carry around, would just invent a Light-based work-around to this problem._

 _Ahhh. Now that I got that out of my system, I'll just leave you all to wonder what Asher has against Alder._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	9. Everything's on Fire

_"Don't you dare look out your window, darling; everything's on fire..."_

 _Safe and Sound- Taylor Swift(Hunger Games Soundtrack)_

* * *

 _Asher didn't run. If one was running, people would assume you were late for something, or harried. He was neither late nor harried, at any time. He was nothing if not punctual._

 _But the urge to run was tantalizingly great at this moment in time. Caroline had encouraged him to go. Bear's ship was soaring into the hangar bay already. Unable to take it any longer, Asher broke into a sprint, robes flapping behind him. Alder-8 snapped at him when he nearly collided with the Titan on his way out of the hangar, but he didn't hear what the Exo said._

 _But Alder's armor was roughed up, though the wearer didn't seem to be injured. If he made it out unharmed, perhaps Eris had been mistaken._

 _The all-call for Sunsingers to report to the hanger as Bear's ship halted on the platform said otherwise. He nearly screamed when, instead of transmatting out, the ramp of the ship lowered, and the two Hunters staggered halfway down it before one collapsed. Asher vaulted over the railing, turning his Light's focus to fire as he did so, causing him to land awkwardly when his glide fluxed._

 _"Asher!" he barely recognized Bear. The Exo's armor was in shreds, and there were three dark slashed ripping the metal plates of his face, one eye dark. He was covered in Taken residue, and Clary was-_

Oh, Light, she's been ripped apart! _Now the urge to scream nearly escaped. He was at their sides so fast he thought he might have blink-stepped, and he started pulsing solar light into the downed Huntress immediately, somewhere in his mind remembering to follow HTC, the correct way apply emergency healing; Head, Throat, Chest. A head injury always took priority, the neck was a hot spot covered in vital arteries and the trachea, and one rib snapped the wrong way could collapse a lung or pierce any number of vital organs._

 _"What happened?" he demanded, hands shaking as he tried to heal a blackened gash on Clary's neck. The veins around the wound were black, marking it as a Dark injury that would take more than just his lone self to heal._

 _"We were swarmed." Bear said. His own hand was clutching Clary's, Light pulsing weakly to try to keep the gasping Huntress calm. "Taken. An ambush, right after we grabbed the crystal."_

 _When the professional healers arrived, Asher had to run to the edge of hangar and throw up. In the forefront of his mind; Alder-8, striding to the Vanguard war room, not ripped apart, able to walk, not struggling to breath or fighting for life as half a dozen of his fellow Warlocks tried to mend an innumerable amount of Dark lacerations._

 _When he was held back from following the Hunters as they were brought to the Infirmary, he stormed towards the Guardian's Hall. The war room was abuzz, and Eris stepped back from Zavala and Alder as he entered, likely know what was about to happen. He could barely keep control of his Light as it pulsed angrily, the void hungry to be released._

 _Yet as much as he displayed his rage, nobody noticed him until he lunged at Alder with a scream, a half-formed nova bomb in one hand._

* * *

Asher didn't sleep that night. All he could think about was Alder. Alder, Clary, and Bear, and how it all seemed like some kind of insult that the Titan was here now. And he was acting like nothing happened! Like he hadn't left them to die in those tunnels.

And for once, it wasn't his own feelings exaggerating the situation; Bear and Clary's Ghosts had both confirmed it.

When the Taken ambushed them, the two Hunters had been deeper in the cavern where Crota's Soul Crystal had been. They had been scouting while Alder retrieved the shard the Vanguard needed to exact Eris' plan. And when the Taken rushed in, out of nowhere... Alder ran with the crystal while the two Hunters were quickly overwhelmed.

According to Clary's Ghost, Pippin, it had taken some 'old tricks on Bear's part' to get them out alive, and even then, barely. Not once did Alder turn back. The Titan's excuse? He 'achieved the objective' and 'any lives were worth it' for 'the goal of killing Oryx'.

It had taken Shaxx, two frames, and Ikora to keep him from melting Alder into a void puddle of molten metal and smashing his Ghost to pieces. It had taken the Vanguard Commander and three more frames to keep the Hunter Vanguard from finishing the job. It had taken two weeks of disciplinary service to convince them both not to murder Alder-8 in his sleep. That, and some very cliche words of wisdom from Bear about the moral drawbacks of revenge.

They had registered as a fireteam soon afterwards. No matter the excuses Alder continued to give, he didn't think he would ever be able to forgive the Titan. Guardians didn't leave other Guardians behind to die; that was something you just didn't do, no matter how important your mission was. If Alder had actually stopped to help the two Hunters, all three of them may have made it out wounded, but not critically so like Clary had been.

Perhaps what he hated Alder most for was that the Huntress was never quite the same after the incident. How could anyone be? She was still the bubbly Hunter she'd always been, but her claustrophobia worsened, and missions involving the Taken were a definite no-go as far as she was concerned, at least until she finished working through the trauma(word had been she drove the Tower therapists around the bend on purpose; it was probably true, she was a Hunter, after all). Bear had only stated that he'd 'been through much worse', leaving Asher to shudder as he contemplated what could possibly top what had happened in those tunnels.

So it was that he spent the next several hours tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable, until Ikora's voice cut the silence, telling him it was time to go.

* * *

The last thing Asher had expected to see coming off the landing field was a familiar face, but for once, it was a pleasant surprise instead of a bad one; one of his fellow Gensym Scribes was standing with her fists on her hips, dirty and disheveled.

"IT'S ABOUT TIME!" Ciera Vilri exclaimed as he, Darkrose, and Ikora approached. Alder had landed somewhere else, for which he was glad. "We have system failures across the board every day, heavily encrypted data, and more tech problems than the early Wall!"

"What kind of encryptions are they?" Asher asked, stepping in.

"Cabal encryptions. You _know_ what those are like." both scribes wrinkled their noses in distaste. _What a bore._ "We had to gut a Golden age CPU just to get the power to process them. We've got the larger files, but there are still details we can't get to."

He looked at Ikora, and she nodded in silent permission. "Join the rest of your order and do everything you have to to get the information we need. When you're done with those decryption, continue analyzing the scans we got from the Warsat network. I want every detail on the Almighty you can get in front of me by tomorrow night."

"Yes, ma'am." Ciera said, scowling. "Can I just ask where the hell have you been? We _needed_ you!"

"No, Vilri, you may not." Ikora narrowed her eyes. "May _I_ ask how many Gensym Scribes made it out of the city?"

"Not enough." Asher felt himself deflate. He'd prepared himself for the possibility that they might not have all made it to the evac points, but... sometimes you hoped. The Order had been filled with the cities greatest minds; not just _any_ Warlock belonged there. The Gensym Scribes stood apart from other Guardians because most of them had IQ's high enough above average that they were too valuable to risk in regular fields ops- hence why he had usually hired out other Guardians for extra protection.

The loss of the Gensym Scribes was a true one, indeed. Exactly how many of Humanities bright minds had been lost?

"Then _we_ ought to get to work." Asher pointed out. Less Scribes for the job would mean more work for them.

"Have a doctor look at you before you start. Take breaks when you need them, Asher; information is your specialty, and we need that skill now more than ever." Ikora told him before turning to Ciera again. "Which way are the other Vanguard?"

While his fellow Scribe gave her directions, Asher took the opportunity to take in the ramshackle Titan base a little more. It was poorly maintained, and the heat shields were malfunctioning, making it hotter than it should have been. Methane only liquefied at temperatures at or exceeding -182 degrees Celsius. As such, the Vanguard would have set up environmental shielding to keep the Guardians warm.

Warm, not _boiling_. He hadn't been on this accursed planet for five minutes and he already felt like he was boiling in his own skin. _That will be the first thing we fix, then._ He'd been through enough these past few months; he didn't want to add 'heat stroke' to the list of maladies he'd encountered recently.

To add to the heat... well, it was methane. It smelled awful. Asher sighed. _When I find out who chose this place as a base, I swear..._

* * *

"So, let me get this straight." Darkrose said slowly after being debriefed on what had happened at the City. After re-uniting with Zavala and Cayde, Ikora had to admit... she felt something stable for the first time in months. It felt... well, _good_ to have them both at her side again. Right now, they stood in a makeshift war room, and Darkrose had demanded answers the moment she saw the Commander.

Answers that she was clearly not happy with.

"You _abandoned_ Humanity?" Ikora flinched. Cayde was looking from Zavala to the living legend frantically as if he couldn't decided who's side to take; he'd fainted when she told him who the Nightstalker was, and had barely been able to contain himself since. As much as Ikora hated to admit it, she could see why Darkrose would accuse Zavala as such a thing.

"I did no such thing!" Zavala tensed. "We can barely protect ourselves, much less the survivors!"

"The survivors on Earth _are_ humanity!" Darkrose erupted. Indeed, erupted, for it seemed as if months of rage, grief, and gaping disappointment were finally being let loose in the minutes that followed. "Or have you forgotten that Chosen are steril? Even without their Light, they still can't have children; they can't rebuilt our species if the survivors fall! What will you fight for when Ghaul finds this-this Farm place and wipes out those poor people?"

Zavala opened his mouth to interrupt, but the ancient Iron Lord wasn't even remotely finished with him.

"You call yourselves Guardians of humanity. You say you would protect them at any cost, no matter how many times you die. Asher Mir told me that all Guardians take an oath to uphold that; to protect and defend humanity in it's darkest hours. And what do you do in the darkest hour of them all? No extra lives, no second chances? You run, like cowards. The leaders of those who took those oaths." She let out a dry, almost cruel laugh. "but what else should I expect from a Humanity who abandoned God to worship an inert AI? What else should I expect from Chosen that have grown soft from centuries of wasting away at safe harbor, that's forgotten the old ways? What else should I expect from a Humanity that has no Iron Lords to make the hard calls; what else should I expect from a Humanity that's forgotten how to live, how to spread beyond one point and tread into the beyond?"

"Before I left, there were villages. There was struggle, every day was a war... and every day, we endured, because that was what you learned to do. Endure. Protect what you have. Spread farther, to other villages. Trade, make alliances... and for the Iron Lords, that meant killing those who wished to harm the innocent. Who suppressed freedom, life, and happiness. People who would have sent Humanity to hell in a hand basket."

"You all have one life left to give; if you truly are Guardians... then you should be ready to give that life gladly. Lesser men have risked the same. The soldiers of old risked that same for their countries."

"You still have your powers." Ikora pointed out, shaking her head. "It's different for you."

Darkrose fixed her with a fiery glare. "Asher Mir risked the Pyramidion to help a random stranger he had never met, under worse conditions than you're in. As I said; lesser men have risked the same. If the most arrogant man I've ever met can do something selfless, then maybe there is hope for humanity. You just need to stop being wussies first."

She started walking for the door. "Stay here and be cowards; I'm taking the first ship I see, and I'm going to the farm. I took an oath, too, and despite my losses, that is _one_ thing I'm going to keep."

With that, a hero of the Dark Age left the Vanguard in rapturous silence.

"She's so awesome, isn't she?" Cayde sighed reverently. Zavala let out a weary sigh, and Ikora closed her eyes, trying not to show how much Darkrose's speech had sent her mind spinning.

* * *

 _Eris,_

 _We're doomed._

 _There is no other way to put it. We are unequivocally, irreparably, and unquestionably doomed. Using the Warmind network, I have deduced that the Almighty's primary function is to inject Dark Energy into the target solar mass after destabilizing it's magnetic fields. Specifically for this purpose, the vessel itself is inextricably linked to the sun's magnetic flux tubes. Should it appear as if the Red Legion is about to fail, the Almighty will activate and kill us all. Should we attempt to destroy the Almighty, the destabilization of it's drive core and subsequent expulsion of Dark Energy will destroy Sol anyway._

 _The cage around the Traveler is built to serve almost as horrid a purpose. All scans fall in line with Ikora Rey's theory; the Cabal are attempting to extract and infuse the Light from the Traveler into an individual. The worst part? It seems as they are almost ready to begin. Ikora has tasked me with attempting to extrapolate data and produce a time frame for completion, and we are both analyzing the scans for possible weaknesses._

 _The thought of Dominus Ghaul wielding the Light is abominable. Be it by him or the Almighty, it seems as if we are all going to perish in horrible fire, mortar or solar. Never have I more regretted Dead Orbit's lack of an actual exodus; leaving the system seems to be the only plausible way to survive this, and I can predict with terrible certainty the destruction of D.O's fleets during the initial attack on the City._

 _We have met the Resistance on Titan. The environmental shields are broken, and everything smells like thrall spit. Only half my Order survived, and we have to destroy Golden Age tech just to survive. It feels like sacrilege._

 _My salt cravings have stopped after several days recuperation, but I now find myself frequently craving mustard. I've yet to ascertain why._

 _You know I hate hate mustard._

 _Asher out._

"Try it now!" he called back from deep inside the ventilation shaft, laying on his back as he looked at the circuits. He wiped more sweat off his brow; he felt like he was trapped in a slow-cooker. His hair stuck to the back of his neck, and he'd shrugged off his robes a while ago; the shirt he wore underneath was now soaked with sweat, and he sincerely hoped the showers were working again, because he didn't want to present his findings on the Warsat data while smelling like a Titan recruit.

Right now, he was re-routing the circuits that connected the power for the environmental shields, with help from the engineering teams. He and his few fellow remaining Scribes had come up with a few solutions to the the power problems the Titan base suffered from, and applying them had become a priority.

The machines hummed with power for only a few moments before sputtering out. Asher slammed his metal fist into the side of the vent in frustration, leaving a sizable dent. In reaction to the force, his arm began twitching in more cybernetic spasms, and he had to forcefully still it with his other hand, mentally cursing. The vex tech didn't always respond well to his too-Human movements, hence all the twitching and glitches his arm seemed to suffer from as time went on. _The only thing worse than having a vex arm is having one that is faulty._

"Try our third plan!" Ciera called from outside. As Asher began re-wiring the system again, silence fell heavy between the two of them. It wasn't that they didn't get along. It was... well, Bear.

"You know, the others missed you. We were having problems with hard-grade engram encryptions, and programming flurries in the Tower AI. Usually your area of expertise." she stated.

"Yes, well, comas can't be helped." he said tersely.

"I was talking about after. You were cleared for lab duties weeks before you left, even if the hospital hadn't released you yet." the other Awoken pointed out. "There were also multiple anomalies in the jovian monitors that we couldn't solve; we needed an expert in code and information, and you weren't there."

"Are you blaming me for something?" he felt anger rising in his chest.

"No. I'm asking where you were."

"You know perfectly well where I was!" he snapped. _Deep breaths, Asher._ It wasn't like there was much fresh air to go around in this heat; the temperature must have been getting to his temper. Yes, that had to be it.

There were several beats of silence, and he dared hope she was done speaking. Until...

"I never did say... I'm sorry for your loss." his hand slipped again, and he swore loudly as a metal edge cut the back of his hand.

"You didn't even know them." he commented bitterly. "All you ever did was drool at Bear, you never actually knew the man. You never looked twice at Clary. How can you be sorry for something you know _nothing_ about?"

"Oh, you're right; Bear was nice. Too nice." she responded tersely. "And it was just flirting; like I said, he was too nice. Good-looking, but not my type. And does it have to matter? I've known you for a century and a half, Asher, and you only settled down when you met those two. I know what it looks like when the right Guardians find each other; I know what a fireteam looks like. And I _know_ how much it hurts to lose them."

"We weren't together long." he said quietly. "And that was a year ago; I can safely say, I'm over them."

"You're far better at lying to those of lesser intelligence."

"Power it again." he ordered hoarsely.

 _I'm afraid I must agree with you._

* * *

"Alright, alright, everyone settle down!" Cayde-6 was trying to calm down several Hunters when Asher entered the makeshift war room. Commander Zavala was there with his Second(he couldn't remember her name, something with an 's' in it), and Ikora was consulting with an Exo he didn't recognize. "Gonna have to ask you guys to shuffle off; we got work to do."

The Hunters stomped off, clearly miffed by something, and all eyes remaining in the room looked to him as the door shut.

"Alright, lets begin." the Commander said as the Scribe found a place at the table. "Without our Light, we need to fight with caution, and we need to focus on cutting the head off the snake. Shiro, you're here because you're probably the closest thing we've ever had to an assassin; we need that."

"I'll do my best, but Fallen are my area of expertise." _Certainly explains the getup._ The Exo had fashioned a cloak made of torn House of Kings insignia, the camo-wrapped sniper rifle leaning in the corner could only belong to him, and the gun on his back looked like some kind of SIVA-made trophy. _SIVA; if only I could get my hands on some of it!_

"Which is why your first priority will be to take out their leadership around the base. We need all the room we can work with, and as little interference as possible." Shiro nodded, and rested his hand on his sidearm.

"If you don't mind, once I've cleared out this place a bit, I'm going to pop by earth and poke around for Saladin and Efrideet; we could use some Iron Lords around. Other than Darkrose, I mean." he shrugged.

"Or _Alder_." Asher sneered. Honestly, he knew Titans were stupid, but he'd thought Saladin at least had enough common sense not to knight that hazard to safety as an Iron Lord! _He probably throw's the title around everywhere, the zounderkite._

" _Asher_." Ikora warned. He shot her a leer in return. She sighed and continued. "We still haven't had any luck finding Eris, so at this point, if we have any major problems with the hive, I want you consulting the team that deals with it; you knew her best, and I think we all know she confided far more of her knowledge to you than she did others."

"Hardly; we're friends, we didn't spend every second of the day reviewing Hive plots to bring cataclysm." he snorted. Sure, he had spent some time looking at Toland's journal(the pessimistic Warlock had been a pain around the Tower, but it seemed he'd only gotten worse after banishment, if the writings were anything to go by), and he knew the basics of disrupting most rituals, but his expertise had always been in the Vex and Cabal.

"You are _also_ here to detail what our Warsat scans revealed. So please; _reveal_." Ikora motioned for him to take charge of the hologram at the center of the table. Activating it, Asher used his datapad to bring up schematics of the Almighty.

"What we gathered from the scans is abysmal." he began. "The most effective way to disable the Dark Matter beam, from what I could extrapolate, is to cause a simple, ship-wide emergency that would require the device be shut down. A fire. Broken heat sinks or energy converters. Shattered containment of the weapon core. This would result in an automatic shutdown of all systems powering the device, so that the entire ship doesn't blow up."

"Hey Shiro, you could do that! Easy!" Cayde interrupted, earning a blank and disproving look from his fellow Hunter.

" _Ahem_!" Asher shot him a glare. "There is a sizable problem blocking such an approach."

"Oh. A 'but'. every time you think you got it solved, you're blocked by a big, smelly 'but'."

"CAYDE!"

"This is a war meeting; not a frivolous bar where you're free to talk like a dreg-brain." Asher cleared his throat again. "As I was saying, the Almighty uses highly advanced encrypted Identify Friend/Foe system. It isn't a matter of gutting just any Harvester and disguising the signal; to get anywhere near the Almighty would require a high-level clearance IFF, most likely to be found in a ship of Dominus Ghaul's closest compatriots. So yes, assassin, your skills may be required in this matter."

"Surely it can't be that simple?" Ikora shook her head.

"It isn't, I've seen my fair share of IFF's." Shiro said, much to Asher's surprise. "Across any species, the most advanced ones are corrupted when tampered with. I could kill one of Ghaul's lieutenants no problem... but ah, I've never really flown a Cabal ship before. And without my Light, I don't like the idea of sitting around while my Ghost learns on the fly. No pun intended."

"Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of IFF we must retrieve. If we capture a like model to the ship we target, you could be trained in piloting it. That would be the most efficient way of doing things." changing the hologram, he moved to equally grim business of breaking down the technology of the Cage. "However, even if you retrieve a ship, and somehow disable the Almighty successfully, we will not be able to hold it for long. So long as Ghaul holds the City, he can send reinforcements. I suggest contacting the Reef and asking for supplements to our own fleet; compared to the Red Legion, we have only a handful of battle-ready ships."

"We've tried; there's been no response." Zavala shook his head. "There were a few Guardians stationed at the Vestian Outpost, but we've heard nothing from them, either."

"Then our only hope of eliminating Ghaul's forces is disabling the cage." Asher explained, enlarging the image of the Traveler. "I am no expert in lucidusology, but I have been able to discern the basic functions of the Cage. The arms contain a vast array of technology the likes of which I didn't know those simple-minded brute were capable of producing. When attached to the Traveler, they produce a suppressant field that contains the Light, wholly and completely. We are connected to the Traveler in the same way the Ghosts are connected to us; once the Link if formed, one cannot exist wholly without the other. Your Titan only got his powers back by Linking to an outside source; and even then, a Guardian Linked to corrupted Light is a dangerous thing."

"We can discuss that later." Ikora told him. "For now, we need a way into the City, and we need a way to disable the Cage."

"Yes, that will be the tricky part. Any approach from the ground will face a network of barrier checkpoints when they get in." he detailed. "And though the plates that make of the cage will be an obstacle, they won't hinder the Light if we disable the arms. Give me more time to study the schematics, and I may be able to teach someone how to best disable Ghaul's ludicrous monstrosity."

"We don't know how much time we have until he completes the Cage." Ikora shook her head with a sigh. "And when he does, he'll be able to infuse himself with _our_ powers. Continue to study it; from now on, the Cage is your top priority. If a month is all we have, I want you to learn every inch metal, every system of circuits, every nut and bolt and wire on and associated with the cage. When we move to take back the City, You and Shiro will accompany us to Ghauls ship, and shut down the Cage."

Ikora's words sent an electric _zing_ of fear down his spine. Him? Dive into the hear of enemy territory, no Light, no Ghost, no Bear and Clary, sick, with a bad arm? Certainly, this wouldn't be the first time he went on a mission of technological nature; he'd gone on plenty. But back then, he'd had his Light. For that one year, he'd had a fireteam, and even before that, there had always been other Guardians to watch his back while he was hacking and analyzing.

"Are you certain that's the best coarse of action?" it took effort to stop his voice from shaking, and it felt like a heavy weight had settled on his chest, slowly pressing harder and harder. Sure; he'd entered the Pyramidion on his own, but this was... this was _different_. He wasn't going to be hanging back, clearing an area with a sniper rifle before entering. This would be a high-action combat and technological threat disablement mission.

This would be a war zone. He was going to walk into a war zone. _In, out, in, out. Just breath. What are you? A kinderguardian?_

"It's the best we have for now." Zavala's second spoke for the first time, having spent the whole meeting observing rather than interjecting.

"Asher, Shiro, you're dismissed. We need to take a closer look at the red Legion's defensive layout; we'll call you if you're needed." Zavala dismissed. Shiro nodded, and Asher turned tail and nearly ran outright from the room. He made a beeline for the closet just around the corner, locked himself in, and began trying to reign in his nerves.

* * *

 _Soooooo... that reveal, right? I have to confess; I'm one of those weird Uldren fans because I just like the Reef in general because it's an interesting environment. And Cayde is my favorite character. So I'm a bit in conflict. So, I'm just going to ignore all THAT noise and focus on the good things... like the new Spectral Blades super. I guess after doing the whole Arcstrider thing, Bungie decided to just take the whole 'ninja Hunters' thing and ran with it. I mean, we have the gunslinger popping shurikenjitsu(which is actually what the art of throwing bladed objects or darts is called), and the Nightstalker running around with void tantos like a samurai._

 _alienraptor: I can't believe it took me this long to update! Personally, I love Warmind; there's less story missions, but way more stuff to do. SO much better than Curse of Osiris._

 _jsm1978: glade you liked it! I remember doing some typo purging back last month for the earlier chapters and stuff, but I don't know if I got them all, so I'll check that one._

 _enji-benjy: This fic is literally labeled as angst, and flashbacks are a tool I use in several of my fics. I have this fic planned out completely, and the flashbacks are a part of it. I'm glad you otherwise enjoy the story, but I'm not changing my writing style just because one person doesn't like it._

 _Cool117: Awesome, glad you're liking it. If you don't see my post on clan chat, you'l see it here; watch a Spire of Stars walkthrough or something, it's time we pineapples tackled that one._

 _alienraptor: nope. You're seeing cats, man._

 _So, the new supers actually help me out quite a bit. Since the Arcstrider was nearly entirely lost, I was going to have an element of the plot that assumed many other Guardian powers and abilities had been lost as well(such as Darkrose's spike-throwing technique). I was actually going to have her do something pretty similar to Spectral Blades in the next chapter, but was thing of dropping it for fear of Mary Sue accusations._

 _Now I can dual-wield away, oh yeah! To quote Drifter,_

 _"ARE WE HAVING FUN YET!?" I'm not sure about that guy yet, he sounds like a pubescent boy trying to do a Shaxx impression. Don't know why that's what came to mind, but, oh well._

 _I just hope bungie makes a system that lock traditionally heavy weapons to the heavy slot; the last thing we need is people running triple rocket launchers in Trails, and without and significance to heavy ammo drops, the crucible would be a little bit broken, boring, and so frustrating that nobody would want to play it any more. That's the main thing I'm worried about._

 _Meanwhile, sorry this update took so long, and I'll try to have the next chapter up sooner. If you were paying attention, I added a certain Titan to the character list after realizing I forgot to add him when I posted. We'll be seeing a lot of Shaxx from here on out, and I think you guys are going to enjoy it._

 _I know I am!_

 _Fare Thee Well!_


	10. We Are the Warriors

**_Shout out_** ** _to whotellsyourstory, who is betaing an attempt at original fiction! Her Mass Effect fic is really great, and I highly recommend it!_**

 _"Here we are, don't turn away now; we are the warriors who built this town..."_

 _"Warriors"- by Imagine Dragons_

* * *

Allison sat int the quiet, watching the hypnotic light of NLS as she got closer and closer to earth. Disappointment raged inside of her; these 'Guardians' were soft. She wished bitterly that she'd questioned Asher more on the Chosen of the future-of _today_ , she reminded herself firmly. Perhaps Titan wouldn't have been such a bad learning experience.

 _Radegast wouldn't have ordered us to run away; he would have ordered us to run head on at the enemy so it had something to focus on while the civilians escaped._ She could see it in her minds eye; Timur leading an evacuation while Silimar and Orwing used their metal shields to block incoming fire. Herself and the others rallying to take on the Cabal while the innocent escaped.

Anyone who survived the attack would follow, continue protecting. Help build shelters. Hunt for food, care for the sick. That was how it would have been.

That was how it _hadn't_ been for the Last City.

 _Fools, gathering everyone into one spot..._ Building a wall? How was a wall supposed to help against an air attack? Or had the designers implemented some kind of shielding? She wouldn't know, she hadn't asked. What mattered was that Humanity needed help, big time. All she had to do was find the refugee camp, offer to help; once they saw she still had powers, they'd be more than grateful to accept her offer.

 _At least now I'll be around actual trees instead of a wasteland planet..._ Io had really sucked.

The console beeped, and she tapped on the interface several time before figuring out how to drop out of NLS. Earth suddenly loomed into view, and she started fiddling with the comms to try to find the right frequency.

"Farm, this is Darkrose, requesting coordinates and permission to land." she tried. Yielding no response, she flipped through each channel individually, and repeating the request, damn the consequences. _Probably making some confused Cabal tech scratch their head right now._ She was lucky to get through five channels without them

"Farm, this is Darkrose, and I've had the mother of all bad days. Consecutively. Every day. For the past. Two. Months. So help me, I'll-"

 _"Darkrose, this is Farm!"_ An accented voice finally responded. She could hear gunfire in the background, and she stiffened. _"CORPORAL, get to the relay and send her coordinates! We're under attack by Fallen, there are civilians behind us and we can't hold for long! Is the Vanguard behind you?"_

"They wouldn't come. But I still have my powers, so hold out as long as you can. I'll see what I can do."

 _"You bloody well better!"_

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" she commented to nobody in particular as the line cut out. Moments later, the ship pinged incoming coordinates. She programmed them into the ship's system, and let the autopilot do it's work. _Please don't crash me, please don't crash me, please don't crash me..._

As she soon found out, crashing was the least of her problems. The moment transmat set her on the ground, all she heard was chaos; people screaming orders, people screaming in terror, Fallen screaming with glee...

And a Titan screaming as he charged a line of dregs with a large tree branch held like a spear. He impaled three of them, and threw the log(bodies and all) into the others. Allison whipped out her hand cannon and took advantage of the disorder the Titan had caused, picking off survivors. _Goo to see Titans don't need the Light to do something excessive._

But more Fallen replaced them, and though her own gun and the _clak-clak-clak_ of the Titan's never ceased, it wasn't enough to contain them or get them into a choke point. _Okay, that's it!_ She dove out from behind the boulder she'd used as cover, drew her bow, and fired a long-range anchor shot. It struck one of the lead vandals, disintegrating it, and hungry tendrils of void latched on to the crew that had been coming in with him. Within moments, the Titan's gunfire had killed one of the trapped Fallen, causing a chain reaction of void explosions that significantly thinned the herd as she dodged back into cover.

"Snipers, cover fire! Artillary, take out those skiffs!" The Titan ordered, voice likely being relayed by his Ghost. He ducked down next to her. "How long will that shot last?"

"I can hold for a few minutes." she told him.

"We need to fall back and take care of the ones that got through." He told her. He rose, fired several shots, and signaled for her to run into the forest they'd had their backs to. She ran, and he quickly followed, as sniper fire rang through the air, picking off stragglers. "Corporal, hold this position while Darkrose and I take care of the Farm!"

"How many got through?" she asked as they ran.

"A dozen at least until I got here; bloody-" he was cut off as a fallen with a spear jumped from the undergrowth and tried to impale him, several others like it following. The Titan grabbed hold of the shaft, and swung it so hard that it's owner was sent flying into a tree with a deadly _crack_. Allison was too slow to dodge, and one of the spear bogymen managed to catch her in the side. She used it's own weapon to tug it closer, and plunged a dagger of void Light into it's shoulder. Flinging the body and weapon away, she threw the void spike into the throat of another Fallen, with the Titan snapped another's spin with his knee.

Clutching her side, Allison hissed through her teeth as the wound smarted with her movements. She could hear more Fallen up ahead, and the screams of the humans running from or fighting them.

"How bad is it?" the Titan asked, concern in his tone.

"I'll live." she grunted. It was long, but shallow. She'd been through far worse, for now, there was a battle to finish.

* * *

 _"Everyone keep moving! Stay together!" Timur's voice rose above the fleeing people. Some carried things, others did not, but all were in a hurry to flee the fallen. Allison fired another anchor shot, tethering a captain and several of it's lackey's. She wasn't sure she could hold it for long, and her Light was so exhausted, she didn't think she could fire any more arrows, either._

 _"Is everyone out yet?" she called above the din of fire, fallen, and scared villagers as the Warlock joined her side, short sword drawn._

 _"Not yet, just a few more it looks like." he told her. He ran forwards and stuck a dreg through. She drew her gun, and shot the tethered fallen. Explosions of void Light popped all around._

 _"How long do you think we can hold them?" she asked, more for his benefit than her own. This was his first_ real _battle. He pulled his sword out of the dreg, and brought it down on another that had tried to rush him from the side. When he cut it down, he turned briefly to meet her eyes. His brown hair was sticking to his face, the flames illuminated dirt, blood, and sweat, and his eyes were bright with Light._

 _"As long as it takes, whatever it takes." It was in that moment, she knew no matter what happened next... Timur would be fine. He was finally, truly, ready as a Chosen._

Allison winced as she pulled the clean shirt down over her head. She rubbed at the bandages that now covered her cut, even though she'd insisted it would heal quickly and the supplies would be better used on those who needed them. The Titan whom she'd been fighting beside, Shaxx, had none of that, and said they couldn't have her coming down with an infection.

The 'modern' gauze felt strange, the unsettled adhesive pulling at her skin as her body moved. The pad brushing against the edges of her wound was oddly chilling. A shirt this clean, perfectly solid color, made of a breathable material that felt like silk but certainly wasn't and was far more durable. It was unheard of in her time, as were the slacks she now wore. So many pockets! And they fit so perfectly, they seemed impossible.

Everything in her time had some degree of ruin and imperfection to it. Even cast out from their futuristic city, even without Chosen to defend them, even here on the edge of it all, these people had such luxury!

"Is Darkrose patched up, doc?" Shaxx's head poked into the tent. He'd taken his helmet off; his face was all sharp features, grey eyes, with dark hair that was in a helmet-ruined undercut style that was lined by two braids.

"I'm ready when you need me." she told him. The doctor moved on to her next patient, a man who had somehow gotten a wood shard stuck through his hand.

"Good, we have a lot to go over." he told her, motioning for her to follow. She did. "I've set up a tighter night watch, but you never know what will happen."

The night was crisp and cool. People were repairing some of the minor damages that the area had taken during the fight. The water wheel could be heard creaking, and a bloody, dead chicken near the med tent shed more of it's feathers as a gust of wind blew through the air. There was still blood and spilt ether on the ground, and people were working to cover the latter with dirt so it wouldn't pose a problem.

"I knew the Iron Lords; was an honorary one, myself." Shaxx started as he led the way to a barn. He turned once to fix her with a steel stare. "I know who you are, Darkrose. I heard the stories right from the source. Suffice it to say, I want to know how the bloody hell it's possible for you to be here."

"In a word? The Vex." she told him. Might as well get this over with now. "I fell in the Vault of Glass, and got caught in some sort of time loop until my Ghost found a way to send me out. Came out on Io, met a few Warlocks, went to Titan with them, and found out you guys were still down here. I thought I might as well do what I've always done."

"Do you know what happened to the Iron Lords?" he asked, voice softening.

"Yes." She answered curtly. It still hurt. It never _wouldn't_. "I found out the day I came back. I've... dealt with most of it."

"If you need to talk, let me know." Shaxx nodded in understanding as they entered the barn; it was being used as some sort of makeshift repair hangar. "Lord Saladin survived that, but we haven't heard from him since the City fell. He's only one out of hundreds who are MIA. Our numbers have never been so low, and the Vanguard aren't responding to our distress calls."

"Like I said, they wouldn't come. They know about you guys, but that Commander is dead set on retaking the City as fast as possible." she told him. The stairs they walked on creaked ominously under the weight of Shaxx's armor. " I gave them a bit of a 'talk' before I left, though. Here's to hoping it changed their minds a bit."

"Dammit, Zavala." the man shook his head. "He's headstrong, but too often he leaps before he looks. He forgets to _think_. Devrim!"

The man on the balcony stopped short with a steaming mug of _something_ halfway up to his mouth. His bushy eyebrows raised. "Yeeeees?"

"I thought I relieved you hours ago? Where's Hawthorne?" The Titan demanded. 'Devrim' shifted the position of the rifle that lay across his lap, and set his mug down the small table next to him, upon which also sat a pair of binoculars.

"She went out to fiddle with that comm relay again. And I'm afraid my insomnia is relapsing; thought I might as well make myself useful." he explained with a shrug.

"Go see if Eir has any sleeping drugs in her stockpile; we can't have our best shot half-asleep at the scope."

"I'd rather not-"

"Devrim."

"Fine, then. I'll go. Who's our new friend?" the englishman regarded Darkrose, who had spent the exchange leaning against the wall.

"Darkrose." she said. "Just a Hunter."

"Devrim Kay, City Militia." he extended a hand, and she shook it polity. "And Lord Shaxx likes to exaggerate; I'm not really the best shot here."

"Stop humbling yourself. Own it." the Titan grunted. "And _get some sleep_ , Kay."

"Yes, yes, I'm going. Do tell Suraya that Louis got out and ate another rooster today?" the sniper asked before heading down. "She needs to make him a new tether, he could have been killed during the attack."

"I'm going to assume Louis isn't the crazy wild man you keep tied in the shed?" she raised an eyebrow in Shaxx's direction.

"No. Hawthorne's a falconer; her favorite bird is an escape artist." He waved her over to look at a map that was pinned to the wall. There was one large 'X' in red, a perimeter outlined in blue, blots in several different shades of purple, green squares in several places, and a black line drawn across over nearly one half of the map's entirety. Shaxx pointed at the 'X'. "This is the Farm. The green is encampments we've set up throughout; the one in the far corner is actually a re-purposed Hide. The Farm itself has very few civilians in it, we sent most of the children, elderly, pregnant, and wounded to the Hide since it's so well-defended. The rest are scattered throughout so we don't have all our chickens in one coop. It stretches us thin, but if the City can't be retaken, it's a basis for spreading out later on."

"Good. At least gets them used to living in separate groups; I hear villages aren't a thing anymore." she commented bitterly.

"Ahhh, villages. I miss those. Anyway, the dark purple is Fallen encampments, ones with an black 'X' are ones we managed to wipe out. Light purple is point of origin for raids like the one we experienced today." he continued. "The black area is off-limits; we've lost too many Lightless Guardians who went in trying to reclaim their powers."

"By Linking to the Shard. I heard." Allison nodded. "It sounds like a big risk on an old rock."

"Indeed. And the few who have come back say they were unsuccessful. Alder-8 was the only one to get his powers back." he agreed, turning to meet her gaze with her own. His eyes contained a deep ferocity, but also intelligence. "But now, we have you. The Vanguard can keep him; _we_ have Lady Darkrose. Not to say that's all that defines you, but it will mean hope; something that's in short supply as of late."

"I'm just a Hunter." she raised both hands defensively. "And I'm Ghostless, so I can't do much. "

"You're fresh from the Dark Age." He snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Sometimes, I feel like the only person around who has a brain. That might be because I spend all my time training hopeless rookies, but having someone else around who remembers how things worked back then will be a big help. These people... they don't know how to function without the luxuries of the City. Part of winning this war, is teaching them how. Making sure that even if Ghaul wins, humanity lives on. It would be the last slight we could make at the Cabal, a victory in and of itself. I would die scattering the Red Legion, but that would mean nothing if there wasn't something left to live on."

"I can see your point." she sighed. "I'll do what I can."

"Even if I were to say... ask you to do a speech?"

"A speech? Why would I make a speech?"

"You're a legend come back from the past, and Chosen who still has powers. These people need hope, inspiration. A kick in the backside. You should give them one."

"I'm all up for kicking!" Allison laughed. "But speeches? Oh, no; I didn't do the talking. Something about too much 'dry humor' and 'cynicism'. No idea what they were talking about."

"Here's a deal, then; if you can tell a good story, you can give a speech no problem." he proposed. Allison smirked.

"A story, huh?" she thought about it.

"To make it even, I'll give you free beer and tell one myself.

"Oh, really now? Free beer?" she grinned. "Bit soon, don't you think."

"Not like that." he chuckled. "Nightstalkers; you take things too seriously. Sometimes, a Guardian just has to relax, have a drink, and trade a story. Everyone needs a break at some point, it sounds like you could use one."

"If you say so." she shrugged. "Who goes first?"

"Me, of course. West?" the man smiled, his Ghost appearing over his shoulder. It pulsed, bringing something out of it's quantum pocket, and two beer appeared in the Titan's hands.

"Really?" she couldn't not laugh. "Your Ghost carries _beer_?"

"Everyone's Ghost carries beer. In an emergency, it can purify the alcohol; makes for a nasty drink, but very handy for disinfecting wounds in a pinch. Learned that one from Lady Efrideet." he shrugged, holding one drink out. In her time, a can of beer was rare, and probably worth as much as your gun if your Ghost knew how to work the chemicals, precisely for the reason Shaxx had mentioned.

"I'm going to assume she joined after me?"

"Ahhh, Lady Efrideet. I _like_ _d_ Lady Efrideet. Let me tell you about her..."

* * *

"Miles down, he plummets, like-like a cannon shot out of a frick'n anti-aircraft gun!" Shaxx boomed, making a 'falling' motion with one hand, before becoming completely still, eyes shining. " _Right_ into a Fallen Walker.

Allison cracked up laughing. "She _threw_ Saladin!? Oh, that's _golden_!"

Whether he'd chosen that story for her benifit, she couldn't tell, but it did the trick. She could picture it in her minds eye... well, sort of.

"Hold up; how big was Efrideet?"

"Four foot five."

" _No_!"

"Oh, yes. Amazing what Light can do, eh?"

The mental image really was spectacular. She couldn't remember the last time she laughed this hard. _When I find Saladin, I'm not going to let this one go!_

"What did Jolder say?" she asked, wiping away tears of mirth.

"He begged us not to tell her. Got down on his knees and actually _begged_ us not to tell anybody about it." Shaxx snickered. "Ahh, I miss those days. They weren't easy times, but we lost a lot of things with the City Age. Okay, your turn."

"Any requests?" she asked. She had never been one for telling stories.

"I once asked Timur how he joined the Iron Lords. Just a bit of curiosity." the Titan leaned forwards, eyes shining. " This led to a quest to find anyone who would tell me about it, because no matter who I asked, they kept their trap shut. I always figured it had to be a good one; Silimar blushed, and I'm fairly certain Bretomart gave me the stink eye for a week."

"That's because they got their butts kicked." Allison grinned. "Timur felt like he was ready to talk to the Iron Lords. I'd spent some time helping him get in touch with his powers, and we were heading up this ravine-last place the Iron Lords were spotted-when some nincompoop starts shooting at us."

"In the end, it turned out to be Silimar. Fresh-rezzed Silimar. Silimar who was capable of literally shooting his eye out when there's nothing for the bullets to ricochet off-I'm not kidding, it actually happened! I saw it!" she insisted as Shazz cracked up. "He was fresh as rose buds! So Timur rushes him, and he jerks the gun around and shoots his eye out. I thought I had taught Timur better than that, tried to call him back; then, Bretomart comes out of nowhere... and he crashes right into her. They fall down the hill... and wind up in a _very_ compromising position."

"I can see why she'd be bothered by that!" Shaxx gasped out between booming laughs. "Proud as a rock, she was! Tackled by a Warlock!"

"That wasn't the worst of it! Silimar's Ghost meant to send the footage to Radagast- he wanted footage from at least one Ghost per patrol, so he could get a good look at anything major that might happen-but... well... If you met Silimar, then you met his Ghost." Allison was still grinning, but internally winced at the memory in pity.

"Total dunderbutt." Shaxx agreed. "He probably wouldn't have noticed if his shell was on backwards."

"Yeah, that patrol footage wound up sent to everyone. She couldn't look the other Titans in the eye for a week."

"No!" the Titan gasped. Allison cracked up again. Again, the image flashed through her mind of skinny, fledgling Timur tackling the 'mighty Titan' with a battle cry, the two of them tumbling down the ravine.

Oh, how she missed him...

"So, one out of ten; how was that?" she asked, still smiling.

"Roughly a seven. If you put your back into it, you should be able to rally the troops easily." Shaxx commented. "Work on your gestures. Body language sells it."

* * *

"So... I suppose you've all heard about me, then." no kidding about that-several Hunters were clustered up at the front, borderline hero worship plastered all over their faces. Hopefully she could manage to squash some of that."Yes, I am Darkrose. Yes, I did vex time travel. Yes, I do still somehow have my powers. No, I won't tell you how it happened, and no, I am not some invincible super hero or whatever you... youngsters might believe."

She took a deep breath. _Here goes nothing._

"I don't believe in the Traveler. I believe in the one and only God; and say what you will about my beliefs, but you can't deny that that the cabal attack came like a reckoning. A test. You can interpret that test however you want to, but I see it as a test for Humanity. To see if we can come back from looking at a broken machine like it's a deity, and fight, think, save ourselves for once."

"The truth? The truth is that this is a harsh world. And be you divinely ignorant, or choosing your belief... be you Guardian or unpowered, man or woman, elder or child, this is where we prove we still have what it takes, or face extinction. By His will, or by our own failure."

"That is what I believe. Agree with me or don't. But that belief is why I will fight until every last drop of blood I can spare is gone from my veins. That belief is why I fight for good, for the innocent... and why I, like so many, will gladly give my all to send Ghaul back to the hell he crawled out of. He slaughtered innocents, and millions, possibly trillions before that if our intel is to be believed. And if he succeeds, there will be no escape. There will be no corner of the system, no crevice, no barren moon where you or anyone will be safe."

"I'm sure you've heard the rumors. Those rumors are true; Ghaul has a weapon that can send Sol into a supernova. It's a gun to our heads. This weapon is why your Vanguard aren't here. Anyone who wants to help work on disabling it, you'll be given coordinates to the base on Titan. For those who stay... survival is the priority. And if the Cabal come for us? Try to snuff out the last of Humanity?"

"We will not go silently into the night. We won't give up without a fight. And we'll make them rue the day they even thought about attacking us! We will not be snuffed out, and if they even come close to doing just that, they'll learn that the bulb burns brightest before it burns out."

"Can I get off this frigg'n podium now?"

* * *

 _So... I was stuck for the longest time trying to figure out how to go with Darkrose's speech. Then, in a moment of 'why didn't I think of this before', I decided to make her religious beliefs a part of it, and the rest just kind of wrote itself. If you don't like it, you don't have to read. And when I got stuck on the end of the speech, I decided to just do true Darkrose fashion 'Can I get off this Podium' because it's Darkrose and it sounded like that's what she would say._

 _As for guessing at Shaxx's appearance, I always pictured him with a sort of Gaelic look to him, even though his accent is English. It just fit more with the theme of his armor and overall personality. So that's why I went with that look, a sort of not-quite-Nix Ulric look._

 _But yeah, in other news, my update schedule-_

 _*rips papers up, throws them in air* WHAT UPDATE SCHEDULE!? LETS SPEND ALL DAY PLAYING GAMBIT AND RAIDING LETS FREAKING DO THIS YEAH!_

 _BraveSeeker3: No, no he is not. I found that particularly amusing._

 _BraveSeeker3(chap 9 review): Yeah, my first reaction, too._

 _jsm1978: Yup, I say! Yeah, It's always great to come across new strike lines. Did you see there's a Wall of Wishes easter egg that makes Riven take on Failsafe's personality? It's freaking hilarious._

 _alienraptor: Bows are great. Bows are lit. the raid bow with Sneak Bow perk run with Way of the Wraith is REDICULOUS._

 _So, my thoughts on the DLC?_

 _AWESOME. Aside from Cayde dying, that is. The whole Awoken space elf city thing is great, and I'm loving how they did it. Never has the game felt more like a proper science fantasy than now, and I love it. I also love the Shards of Galanor. so fantastic..._

 _I count down the days until it gets nerfed. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy them... as well as the One Thousand Voices that dropped for me yesterday..._

 _On my first clear... I feel like such a dirty, lucky little nerdy pleb. I was only in it for the shaders._

 _Never got any shaders. I feel cheated._

 _Fare Thee Well!_


End file.
